If There are Wolves Among the Stars
by skywalker05
Summary: AU. The starship Long Night of Solace has been cast adrift, partially intact, in slipspace, and the one Spartan and one Sangheili aboard both have reasons to get back to Reach. Jorge/Six.
1. Fallout

A/N: Inspiration for this comes from all the fun people I've met through Halo fandom, and from the story "The _Mona Lisa_" in Halo Evolutions, which is brilliant and devastating and you all should read it, preferably at night. Relk is almost but not quite Henry. Also thanks to betareaders **LadyLaconia **and **wordswithout.

* * *

**

**I.**

_Zero Mark._

He had been shaking before, all-encompassing little pinpricks like bugs crawling inside his skin and making him feel so very _old_, but that's done now. He looks at the ugly square of the makeshift bomb and presses the button.

_Minus Three Seconds_

He could have watched her fall away. It would have lightened him a little, to see her alive, even struggling. (Her voice is in his ear now, ringing over and over his name, _Jorge, Jorge_, frantic as human. She has had the Spartan calm burnt out of her, but it will load back up like a shield in a few minutes. She will be all right.) Reach was a warm-glowing sphere behind her, but he could not stop to look. The fleet was out there too. He was going to save his world.

_Minus Ten Seconds_

She got her arms around his neck and held on like she was never going to let go and then she let go. He would remember her weight against him for the rest of his life. (For the next ten seconds.)

He let weightlessness have her.

_Minus One Hour_

He leaned forward against the back of the Falcon's pilot seat and took her hand, smiling with a hurt sort of smile even though she couldn't see his face. They both knew, when they saw the mocking black-greenness of space. Sometimes soldiers had premonitions like that, uncanny moments where the broken ones who guess that they're all about to die are right. Something was going to happen, and he didn't have the words.

She squeezed his hand back, putting all the pressure and warmth there was into the armor between their fingers.

_Minus Eleven Days_

She walked through the door of the bunker with a swagger in her hips and a sniper rifle magnetized to her back. She had no face and no name. Carter briefed her and everybody else assessed. Six was a stolen number.

* * *

_Minus Three Hours. _

Relk 'Forsovai was enjoying the show. He stalked along the edges of the hall. Sure, he had no right to spectate from afar, he should be getting in there, but _look at this! _It just made him want to fight, made him want to take a human head between his hands. They were good stress relief, humans.

But right now, Relk wasn't stressed. His lean body was about as relaxed as Sangheili could get, showing all the signs; shoulders low, two hearts beating in slow rhythm. He just felt _great._

The others were nervous, but then, it wasn't every day that an officer decided to challenge a Zealot.

The argument was something about tactics or timing or for all Relk knew there was bad blood between them back on Sanghelios. But the ship's Zealot, all-powerful, blessed-by-the-Forerunners, idiot Zealot Karak 'Segnee, had finally skipped all the formality and starting beating his rival with his bare fists.

This would have been perfectly acceptable, had not the Minor started to hit back.

So the middle of the hall was now filled with growling, gleaming, tussling Sangheili.

Relk paced and growled. Because Relk was the immediate superior of the Minor. He should really be doing something about his behavior, and it was his honor at stake too if he had raised someone who didn't deserve to be in the ranks. (Humans called Sangheili "Elite", and the name meant mostly the same thing to them—you were born elite, you composed yourself like one of the elite, and you died with honor.)

Then the Minor dodged forward and with a thrash of his long neck he _bit _at the officer, drawing four long weals across the brown skin of his neck, and Relk was not going to stand by while this space-crazed madman kept fighting. He pushed into the fight to grab his soldier by the shoulders and pull him backward.

The Minor thrashed in his armor. "We shouldn't _be _here."

"We're winning, you idiot," Relk hissed, pulling him backward. The officer followed, looming over the Minor with a expression usually reserved for humans.

"We can't sanctify this planet," the Minor yowled. "It has born too many demons—"

"Shut him up," the Zealot said, and punched the Minor in the chest. Not hard, but enough to rock him and let Relk feel it.

This was a bad idea, because Relk had not had the fight he had been itching for yet, and he was just _falling _to fightlust like a meteor into atmosphere, and he didn't even _think_—

He just hit the Zealot back, a flat-hand and clawed push to the shoulder that wasn't half as hard as the punch but knocked the officer off balance a little with surprise. The rationale in his head was _it's my job to berate my men, not yours, _but he didn't get it out because then he realized what he'd done.

The remnants of the crowd were back, eyes wide and mouthparts drifting into surprised expressions. The Zealot, though, had no surprise. Just rage.

He lunged, knocking the Minor out of the way, almost tripping over its flailing foot, punching toward Relk's face. Relk's vision filled up with a red haze and he thought he tasted his own blood, then the Minor started to squirm and hit back.

But he was already off balance. The Zealot, bigger and stronger, simply grabbed him by the side of the jaw and twisted, wrenching him to the ground and lifting his hands again with blood on the palms. He stamped down and Relk heard bone crack. That was the end of the Minor. Relk had heard that sound enough times before. (It was an honor for the Minor, though, to die in battle. He would continue along the Great Journey; the Zealot had simply helped him.

Relk was in fight mode now. He had been affronted! He had been insulted! He too one punch on the side of his face and slammed both his hands against the officer's other arm and pushed him aside to bring his jaw into line and punched.

The Zealot reeled back, glared and slavered, and drew his weapon.

Relk knew his way around swords; he had the honorific to prove it. So he was confident when the Zealot swung at him, a swift strike from right shoulder to left hip. Relk stepped back and to the side, his long, bent legs quickly carrying him around to the Zealot's side.

He grabbed the Zealot's arm and twisted it sideways, straining the sinews and pointing the wide plane of the sword back at its wielder.

Time seemed to slow down as the Zealot thrashed. It took an immeasurably too long moment for him to realize how much _trouble _he was in. Now he'd assaulted an officer to defend someone else who'd assaulted an officer. This was _insane. _There would be exile or excommunication or execution.

Unless, of course, he pinned it all on the Minor, who might have killed the Zealor before Relk killed _him_ in rehabilitation—the poor idiot was too dead to defend himself, after all.

Yes. The Zealot turned, raging, against his own strained arm, and Relk continued what he had started. He took another step forward and got his hands around the Zealot's on the sword.

The fact that the Zealot was taller and heavier than him was immediately apparent. He shoved Relk backward until his back hit one curved wall and he just had to push back. The plasma blade glittered like quartz.

Relk pushed the Zealot's sword through its wielder's armor, up under the shoulder and into the neck. He went limp immediately, and Relk threw the body away from him as far as he could. From one brief look at the stump of neck he struggled away and bent double, fighting the urge to cough up something half-digested. He looked at the blue-purple shining floor in front of him, not wanting to think about the puddle of blood, a different blue entirely, spreading toward the backs of his feet.

Then someone walked into his field of vision and Relk started to pay a lot of attention to _their _feet, because was that the insignia of the Shipmaster?

It was.

The Shipmaster loomed. Relk ground his back teeth. "The Minor went crazy, exalted Shipmaster, I couldn't help-"

"I saw how you _helped_."

Relk discovered at that moment that he was a terrible liar.

The Ship Master, voice of the Fleet of Particular Justice, looked at Relk, back at the Minor, back. All of them frozen.

"You," said the Shipmaster. "Exile."

* * *

That was how he ended up in a cell on the _Long Night of Solace_, wondering how the battle was going.

He shook his head. He had been sitting so long on the purple-shining bench (Covenant made sure that everything was beautiful, that everything glorified the gods) that his long legs had gotten stiff. He was bored and alone and knew he had done something stupid, but at the same time it was hard not to be angry at someone who'd spat that word _Exile _in your face.

For now, all it meant was solitary confinement. If the battle ended eventually and the ship trekked back to a Sangheili world, though…he would be tried for failure to keep his men in line and for assaulting an officer. And if they pronounced "Exile" then, well, he would be gone. Nameless. Species-less.

He cursed in every Covenant language that he knew, and stood up, growling. He slammed a fist against the wall and leaned into it, then, surprised by the pain, moved back; his bulky battle armor and weapons had been taken from him but he still had sturdy armor and foot wrappings, and he slammed kicks against the wall until he felt the bloodrage subside and breath work its way through his four mandibles.

There was nothing else he could do except keep waiting.

So he kept waiting. Something was going on out there. He knew who was going into battle, and it ate him up not to be able to see who survived. It had taken the best to overrun this planet. The one who had sent him to his doom had been right about one thing.

The place was the birth of demons.

So Relk waited.

He was almost asleep when the ship shook. He opened one eye, wondering what salvo had gotten through the _Solace_'s shields.

But human weaponry did not act like _this._

A gaping pit opened up in the side of the cell, as if the ship had been torn apart from hull to hull and he was suddenly looking down—it didn't matter that the wall was on his right side, that vacuum-gulf was _down. _Hands grasping for the side of the cell, Relk started falling. _  
_


	2. Divine Providence

**II.**

Slipspace, Jorge objectively knew, was a set of seven dimensions accessible through Shaw-Fujikawa transitional tunnels. It enabled the Alliance military, as well as the Covenant, to travel distances inaccessible by conventional rocketry. It involved almost as much science as the average Spartan.

But right now it had nothing to do with numbers and transit times. It was a blue-black star-backed gulf opening in front of him, and he leaned the back of his neck against the rim of his armor and watched it come. Somewhere below, Reach was waiting for him to fall back to her.

The ship shook itself and shook him and he felt jolt after jolt as he was thrown. But oblivion never came, and the surprise of that was stunning. Jorge found himself on his hands and knees on the tipping deck of—he looked around. What part of the ship was this? Not the arena of the last stand. A small hallway off the hangar, purple-floored and rib-ceilinged. He opened his eyes, sat up and turned around to take stock of the situation. He remembered the feel of his helmet in his hands, the slight sweat slick of the inner curve, and wondered where it was now. Even without Emile's paranoia, a Spartan grew to think that that their mask was their face. But he turned and saw that more than that had been lost in the blast—

The hallway behind him was endless.

Slipstream rupture. Space was streaming past, carrying white and yellow and purple streaks with it. The hallway ended in a neat shear, with none of the innards of the Covenant ship poking out. Artificial gravity held the ship together and occasionally rocked it in rumbling tectonic shudders. It was not pleasant to look at, the impossibility that was the gap between the livable corridor with all its forces—oxygen, pressure, gravity, Spartan—and the slipstream. It had, along with all the physical forces at war, some quality that made the eyes slip off its edges.

Somehow, the Long Night of Solace was continuing on.

Jorge cursed under his breath and backed away from the gulf, then turned and spied his helmet on the ground, looking like it had just rolled into a corner. It was scarred and familiar-looking next to the purple wall, and he moved to pick it up. (The slipstream bomb had been almost gentle to him, then. It had rejected humans things and taken the Covenant. He was floating who-knows-where in space now, but…death had not been able to stomach him.)

This brought a small smile to his face and new purpose to his walk. He turned his back on the gulf, rejecting it as it had done to him. The Spartan way was to use what you had. He had half a space ship.

Now to figure out if he could use it.

He walked through a tangle of hallways, his helmet replaced on his head and his weapon ready. He and Six hadn't left any Covenant alive—that had been part of the mission briefing. (It was always part of the mission briefings.)

If Six was still alive and Reach was out there somewhere (and it was, if the Solace could be brought back to normal space), then he could get back and finish this fight and give her back some of what she had lost when she'd screamed his name into vacuum.

With the Long Night of Solace gone, the UNSC could have routed the rest of the Convenant. It was a free planet he would get back to, and if it wasn't then it would be when he arrived. The Covenant would not take that world—

(The gulf of slipstream had not been a loss for him. It was not enough to frighten a Spartan. It had been a gain of new resolve.)

There was a noise in a corridor to his right, a narrow one that sloped downward. (What did Covenant have against stairs? Presumably there were none that could match the strides of all the different species.) Jorge shifted toward it, ready to fire, and the skittering noise sounded again. No shadows moved, but that had sounded like the shuffling of Elite feet.

Everything started to sound like the shuffling of Elite feet when you were alone on an alien ship. Jorge carried on.

* * *

Relk squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed onto the nearest thing, which happened to be the wall of the ship. Vacuum chill frosted and nipped at his knuckles. He ducked his head. Winds whipped past and then were abruptly shut off as the shields of the ship cocooned it and him.

He opened his eyes. Gravity sheeted back to its usual place and he fell to his forearms on the bench that was the one furnishing of the cell. Immediately his eyes opened again and he tried to stand, regretting curling into a ball like a child faced with its first disappointment. The shield breach had wrenched the bars of his cell into strange angles, like a sculpture of criss-crossed lines—and an opening big enough for him to duck through, like the eye of a god.

Growling a few sacred syllables, the curse/blessing runes of the Great Journey, he stepped through the hole and into the ship proper.

It looked intact, although green warnings lights were pulsing in every hallway. He proceeded slowly, seeing no sign of any other Elites. There had been a battle, he knew that much. It had probably signaled the uncloaking of the Long Night of Solace over the demon-spawning planet called Reach. But they hadn't _won. _The Elites could not be defeated by mere humans, even with their demonic attempt at glorifying themselves by elevating some of their number to elite warrior status. The Great Path ran straight through the human species, and so the Covenant would pass it by. So said the Prophets.

Relk had no way of getting in touch with the prophets unless he got out of slip space, and if there was a way to get out of slip space in half a ship without divine providence, he didn't know it.

Luckily he did have divine providence on his side.

If he could just do something to prove his worth after his utter shame, maybe he could find a way out. He'd show the Zealots, show an entire court of them if necessary, and regain his honor and arrive back on Reach with the heads of his enemies bleeding at his feet—

If he could find any enemies.

But there was providence again. He moved carefully down a hall, wishing he had a weapon in his hands, and saw instead a glowing computer panel. He keyed in the runes for surveillance of the shipmaster's domain and scanned for life signs.

There was one, the red blip of an alien invader; possibly a remnant of the battle that he had missed. The computer was barely functioning, flickering with gray static as if a fungus had invaded it. It got worse as he looked; the ship was dying, and no wonder. Who knew how much of it was missing. It was an obstacle course.

And it shook. He braced against the wall as a tremor ran through the floor, and wondered how long the ship was even going to hold up. He just needed to get to the bridge and…find out how to get rescued.

He kept moving, heading toward the armory, nervous for humans and Elite alike. Maybe if he could find a surviving unggoy it wouldn't know of his shame and would serve as assistance or a shield—

He heard the sound of heavy footsteps and froze. A quick look around the corner revealed an armored human stomping down the corridor. It was so eerie not to be able to see their faces. Relk ground his teeth and backed into the hallway, groaning inwardly at his cowardice. But if he didn't have any honor left anymore anyway, and there was no way he was going to survive a fight without a weapon, there was no reason why not to back away.

He scurried back to the computer and pulled up what he could of its schematics. The comms were dead, their receiver surely scattered to space somewhere and no unggoy messangers to replace them. (Living things were always more reliable than machines.) Although the picture was blurry, he could see the human walking through a mustering room near the bridge—a room with plenty of upper balconies from which Relk could attack from above if he just found a weapon.

The ship shuttered again and the computer died, flushing green like sickness before it disappeared completely.

Relk moved off toward the bridge.

* * *

Jorge knew that he was being watched. The little red lifesign was almost on top of him, and the hallway had opened onto a room with two stories and some bulbous kind of Covenant engineering in the middle. The Covvie on Jorge's HUD was hiding up there somewhere, and the Spartan turned his helmeted head slowly from side to side looking for it.

It wasn't a big deal for a Spartan to wade into a red field of enemies. There had been human enemies too for Jorge, during the rebellions, and that was something the Threes had not experienced. That was why there was a sadness to Jorge before he fought. (During the fight, though, it was all Spartan joy and _this is what I live for.) _

Footsteps above and Jorge saw the Elite and saw the armory. The scrawny Covvie looked even smaller because it was wearing a tooth-yellow underplating instead of the usual bright armor. It picked a round-backed plasma gun off the wall and prepared it. Jorge heaved his assault rifle into a comfortable firing position.

The ship lurched. Jorge braced against one of the structures on the floor and looked back at the transparent wall behind him. Space seemed to boil in reds and whites and starless purples. The world tipped and Jorge found himself lying on the outjutting structure. Metal ground and screamed, and a purple lens cap of wall covering fell down the room. Jorge kept one hand clamped onto the side of his perch and the other ineffectually on the bracing handle of his gun.

The Elite had been halfway through a step toward him when the ship sheered. As it tipped he bounded from ramp to strut to outcropping, plasma gun held out in front of him. He just kept going as the ship tipped sideways again in an unexpected direction. Jorge hunkered down, narrowing his eyes. He pulled himself with on hand in the direction that happened to be up at the time. The Elite fired.


	3. Gravity Sheer

**III.**

The Eilte landed beside Jorge on hands and feet, thick fingers splayed around its gun. The bolts pinging off of the Spartan's armor chipped away at his shield. It was dangerous to underestimate the strikes he could not feel.

He grabbed the Elite's ankle, his fingers almost meeting over the bulge of the back sinew, and pulled it to the side.

The Elite scrabbled for purchase, but then the ship sheered again. Gravity returned in the opposite direction, and Jorge found himself falling off the side of the pod and onto the floor next to his enemy. The door toward the bridge gaped open, now below him, now to the side. Jorge dragged his gun around and squeezed the trigger.

He stopped before he could shoot, because the Elite was not fighting back. Its plasma pistol lay on its side on the floor, knocked across the room by the gravity shift, and the alien drew up one shoulder as if to protect its long neck. Its yellowish skin shook slightly.

Carter would not have stopped. Kat would not have stopped. Emile would not have stopped.

Jorge stopped. The Elite babbled in its guttural language. They both froze in place, looked at one another. The Elite disgusted Jorge, with its split jaw and lanky arms, but he did not want to kill when he could avoid it, when the one in his sights changed from enemy to victim. He prided himself on not being like Emile.

And Emile had never been set against humans and given free range on whether to kill or capture them.

Jorge tipped his targeting reticule a fraction of an inch off the Elite's head and waited for a few seconds. Ne response. The Elite shook.

And then Jorge began to move slowly backwards toward the bridge.

**Relk didn't have ** much left to lose, and he was going to use that to his advantage.

He felt covered in shame, absolutely drenched in it, but it was a fuel for fire. He had not even succeeded in dying in battle, as if the enemy had also heard of his exile from the holy war.

Yes, he had played up his surrender. There was more shame in that. No Elite would grovel like this!

But Relk had one way of living through this Solace, and that was to make the ship workable again, while it was still haunted by a Spartan. He needed not to die, and he needed to tear apart that human…who was, to all intents and purposes, a walking tank.

Relk got to his feet in the now-empty room. The wall that used to be the floor shook as the engines tore themselves apart. He would return to Reach with the Solace and the demon as his prize, and would prove to the Shipmaster that he should have his honor and rank back…

No. Not the Shipmaster. Unless he was hiding out somewhere, he was dead. Slipspace had taken him and all the rest and…

Relk let that sink in, a soup of terror and relief.

The news of his exile would have gone out while he was imprisoned, and so the next-highest rank he needed to see, was…the Prophet. He and his guard would be down on Reach to purify it as soon as the fighting was over.

Relk took a breath. With his new, rearranged goal in mind, he headed for the armory.

**The bridge was **still intact. Protective sheathes had closed over the viewport, obscuring the manta curves of the bow. This section had been farthest from the blast, and the most reinforced. The bridge was the skull, the engines the spine, and the Solace a skeleton drifting in space… Relk, now armored and more heavily armed, looked down on the large, round chamber. The demon was down there, moving from closed window to blackened control board. There were still Sangheili bodies lying on the floor or broken over railings. Another demon had been here.

Relk descended to the main level just as his lone companion bent to pick up a snub-nosed black gun that the other demon must have discarded. He magnetized it to his back and looked around. Relk emerged slowly, his plasma gun caging his right hand and a sword hilt at his hip.

The demon noticed and then pointedly ignored him, turning its broad back to the nodes where computer interfaces had once been. Relk felt laughter or nervous breaths spasm through his throat. He followed the demon, brushing computers into life as he went. The ship was nearly dead. A living bank showed one thousand ugly warning sigils. Half of the ship was missing. Relk had seen the edge of it.

The demon looked at him, spoke, looked down at another computer.

Relk trailed his claws over a keyboard—and suddenly the imposing face of his Prophet was filling the largest screen, giving the benediction it had given before the great push onto Reach, speaking of fightlust and the Great Path. The view changed so that the Prophet was holding another hologram, a little green Reach. Relk stilled as he saw the planet, and the human did too. Relk had barely been noticing him move as he investigated the computers, but his sudden stillness was a bit of a shock. Relk thought he had never seen a demon so obviously focused.

Relk was picturing the Prophet's honor guard down on Reach, how they would gape and stir when Relk called from the Solace with a demon's bleeding head in his hands. How he _wanted_ this future. The hidden fleet would have started the purification of Reach by now, completely unexpectedly. The humans would flee like animals from fire.

There was no way to control this ship now.

But the demon wanted Reach too; Relk had seen it.

The ship shook. Relk was wrenched backwards as gravity shifted and pulled him to the side, toward a cloudy hologram of the gesticulating Prophet. Suddenly he was rolling over a fluted railing, clutching at the slanting floor. The head on an unggoy body next to him rolled like a nod, making a low rumbling sound. There was a gold-armored Stealth Major on the ground two bodylengths away, shield flickering in and out of transparency, sliding away from Relk in what was now downhill. (The other Spartan had ploughed through this room, leaving people Relk knew behind. Demons indeed. Even as the hologram of the Prophet holding the world faded, he thought that he should be out there with them right now, on the Path.)

The shaking stopped, leaving the room slanted toward Relk's right shoulder. Creaking screams resonated in the distance as another piece of the ship came off. Relk had an unpleasant vision of the ship's gradually decaying edge sheeting toward him, carrying the vacuum behind it.

Everything was still now, the bodies rearranged. The demon was gone.

**Jorge sat in **an alcove between the bridge and the first room he had fought the survivor in. It was near where he had fallen when the gravity sheered again. The Elite had not come after him, and that was alright. Let them haunt the Solace together for a time; he would keep his helmet on and his eyes sharp. Spartans were supposed to be goal-oriented, but without a goal, Jorge remained calm and contemplative. He did not know how to fix the ship. He would search and wait until he found out.

Six had left the bridge a killing floor. She had done well. Carter would say the same, but, then, doing a good job was _assumed_ for a Spartan. It could have been anyone of them in there—Kat, Emile, Jun.

And Jorge wouldn't have picked up their empty gun.

The assault rifle felt light in his hands, surely because he was used to a heavier weapon. The weight of the clips was miniscule. But he _knew _that Six had discarded this because it had been empty. He could almost see her fingers unwrapping and letting the rifle drop while the other hand reached for her pistol or a plasma rifle on the ground, and this gun had been, for a short time, hers. It took none of the heat of his hands—the MJOLNIR armor was better than that.

She was probably somewhere on Reach now. They all were, pushing the Covenant back. Without the Elite flagship, the humans could regain Jorge's world. Six and Carter and all those threes might be sitting in Sword Base right now, just talking.

And Six thought he was dead.

He hoped that she was happy. She gave him her name. (Usually Spartans knew, for solidarity, but no one had asked her, because something had happened with the death of Thom. It wasn't a MIA. It was a broken bone in the body of Noble.)

And Jorge had given Six his tags, but that wasn't anything, really. He would have given them to any of the others too, to bring part of him back to Reach.

He hoped Six was happy. But if she wasn't—(if she wasn't then he needed to _ be there_, to lift her chin up and say _something-)_

He missed her more than he had missed anything in a long time. He would make it back to Reach.

**Three hours later**, Relk entered the hall. He had been exploring the ship and had gone down to the shuddering, space-cracked engine deck, and seen what could be done.

He spied the Spartan sleeping, or at least he appeared to be asleep. The wide eye-mask was still open.

Relk approached slowly.


	4. Trusting a Demon

Jorge opened his eyes to find the Elite almost close enough to touch. He stood up, Six's gun clattering off his lap and onto the ground. (No need to keep a spent weapon.) The Elite was fully armed now, with thick blue-purple armor and an unlit sword in his hand.

And he raised his hands in the universal 'here is my heart for you to shoot, so don't shoot it' gesture of surrender.

Jorge hesitated.

The Elite nodded.

It was actually trying to communicate. This weasely thing whose people had tried to burn Reach was trying to speak to him.

They might get out of here if they worked together…even as it rankled Jorge to think it. He drove back the thought that he was betraying his people. He needed what help he could get. That was practical. There would be time for revenge later, when he was back on solid ground.

Jorge nodded back, hands tense on his assault rifle.

The Elite gestured for him to follow it and he did, slinging his heavy gun into its usual place in both hands.

They made uneven progress. The Elite refused to turn his back completely. He seemed to think that the close-range weapon he held was his best strategy if Jorge opened fire, which it was. The sword could cut through MJOLNIR armor easily enough, but Jorge could also get his hands around the Elite's neck and twist if he needed to. Neither of them thought the other was an ally.

**Relk knew that **you couldn't trust a demon. Theirs was a species that had fallen off the Path and decided to do none of the ablutions to return to it. They worshipped ugliness instead of beauty, and Relk felt like he was about to be shot every time he looked forward with this one following him. Humans had _chosen_ to step off the Path and distort themselves beyond recognizing, if they had ever been a civilized species to begin with.

But if he was going to get this ship anywhere near running again, he was going to need someone strong.

He had visited what was left of the engine rooms during the night. The port node wasn't a complete engine room, really; the brunt of the slipspace generators had taken out the powerful drivers slung under the Solace's flanks. But Covenant ships were built with power like nervous systems; plasma sub-jets spaced along the ship could also affect its position within the tenuous balance of reality and slipspace.

Relk was no engineer; he barely knew how slipspace worked. It had been used since before he was born and it was how starships got around; he did not know the physics beyond that. But he did know that to drop the ship out of slipspace, the engineers slowed the great shining engines down.

And he knew that there was one engine left, sitting underneath the skin of the ship like a remora, grinding its way through the stars but almost dead, and he thought he knew how to kill it.

He would not be able to use the room's computer to turn the engine off, although when he had scouted out the engine room it had been lit with one blue-glowing screen and not much else, purple corkscrew pins turning on the ceiling like the hands of some monster from the darkness, all the more frightening for their seemingly purposeless movements. The computer, though, had been smashed by a falling strut. That strut was still connected to the main engine by a bundle of wires and filaments, revealing the ugly dark blue fibers the Covenant used underneath the more aesthetically pleasing purple lacquer. If he pushed it to the side he could disengage that power source and stop (or possibly explode) the engine.

Better explode than starve to death. (Although he hadn't gone that far back toward the breach to check, he was pretty sure the living supplies room had been vaporized).

However, he couldn't get the strut to budge. He could cut through the filaments with a plasma sword, but then the strut would fall straight down instead of into the engine. He needed the human to push the strut while he cut, or the other way around. (The other way around would mean he would be safer, but it would also mean that he needed to give the Spartan the sword.)

So it just took force. If only another Elite had survived—

But no. Then Relk might be in even more danger than he was now. An angry warrior who had heard about his exile might not think before deciding to act out his sentence on its own, in imagined retribution for crippling their ship.

Relk shook his head in anger, then flicked a glance over his shoulder. The human was still there, still silent.

Because he returned his gaze to the front, looking briefly down at the floor before taking metal hold of himself and standing up straight with a proud curve to his neck, he did not see the human's reaction when they stepped into the engine room.

It was a proud place. Sacred runes had been painted on its ceiling and floor, parading along the edges of the room like impossible trails of footsteps. One wall was open to space, with a blue force field separating the two from the stars. The engine noise was a loud buzz that intensified near the ceiling until Relk almost wanted to put his hands over his ears. He watched the human's head turn, taking in the smashed computer and the one long strut out of place.

Relk said, "We need to move this."

The human said something conversational and incomprehensible that might have contained the Sangheili word for tree.

Relk growled, shook his head, and moved into the room. The human followed, looking up at the high ceiling and its banks of machinery. Relk wanted to tell him that this was just one small engine, that the Solace had been great once—but he would have time for that retribution later. He could give the speech to the gold mask the same whether the human behind it was alive or dead.

Seeing the human's gaze drift up toward the runes, Relk waved at him and took three long steps over to the base of the strut. The human looked straight at him, expression unreadable.

Relk put his arms against the strut and pretended to push. The human said something again and Relk hissed in frustration and pushed a few more times before waving the human over with the two-fingers extended symbol that Sangheili officers sometimes used to direct their troops in the field.

It seemed to be a universal enough sign, since the human walked over and, with a dismissive wave, touched his palms to the strut. He looked up and down at the engine setup, and Relk wondered what calculations were going on in that brain if he was trying to figure out how the engine worked.

(Relk hoped he wasn't figuring out more than Relk himself knew.)

**He was. Jorge **saw the exercises he had done as a child overlay the scene like holograms in his mind as he tried to figure out how the engine worked and what fed power to what, as well as what pushing over this strut would do. It was a column twice as thick around as he was, ending in a tangle of black wires. He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out how this might help them escape, where the load-bearing supports were, and exactly how much weight he was about to push around.

The Elite was trying to escape too; Jorge had seen how he looked at Reach. Jorge had taken just a moment off his attention off those green continents to see the Elite's neck almost stretch toward the hologram.

There was something there he wanted.

So Jorge was willing to help, and would try to figure out what exactly he was doing.

Then the Elite drew the sword.

It flared up, white-blue and hissing, and Jorge straightened out of the push to bring his full height into the equation and draw his pistol, quick, with one hand while picking up the heavy machine gun with the other. The Elite bounded _up _the column, sword in hand, and crouched up there looking at him with a stare that might have been accusing had Jorge been paying enough attention to his eyes instead of his sword and teeth to think anything at all about his expression. The Covenant certainly did their work to make themselves look like animals—but Jorge gingerly eased his finger off the trigger as the Elite lowered the sword and cocked its head at him.

The Elite pushed at the cords near him just like he had before, and Jorge thought he had it figured out. He could push and the Elite would push and something would happen.

He readied his overshield, just in case this was a trap. He could get out fast if he needed to.

He could also probably push the column over and crush the Elite under it. He kept these and other tactics in mind as he waited for a signal.

The Elite leaned down and set one palm against the column and nearly set the sword down, and then its shoulders hunched and it started to push and Jorge started to push.

The weight was a palpable presence, a resistance on his shoulders and the undersides of his arms. Slowly the column moved as he leaned into it. Metal scraped, a small, tinny noise that became a deep rasping.

Then the Elite swung its sword down. Sparks exploded from the nest of wires and the whole strut gave way. Jorge took one step to prevent himself from stumbling forward and backed away as the strut collided with others , its severed top end slicing into the machinery on the crowded ceiling as gravity did the rest of the work of toppling it. The Elite took a twisting leap off the falling column and landed on the floor barely a meter from Jorge, immediately dousing the sword.

And one part of the ship's engine tore into another. Sparks rained down onto the open viewing deck on the farther side of the room, and pipes swung freely from the ceiling and crashed into the ground. Jorge heard detritus clatter against his helmet as he backed toward the doorway.

The engine sound, that thunder that he had nearly forgotten behind the dampeners beside his ears, screamed like hurricane winds and tore itself into near-silence. The floor shook. Jorge looked nervously at the shield onto space.

In the distance, a small electric hum remained. The room went even darker than before, a few stray holograms at the column's base still hanging in the air like stilled sparks.

Slipspace kept streaming by.

The Elite slumped for a moment, and then it reared back and spread all four mouthparts and shouted. Its anger was directed at the engine, at the situation, and Jorge sat back and folded his arms and watched.

Inside the helmet he closed his eyes for just a moment. Nothing else changed.

Their chance to stop the ship had come and gone.


	5. Seraph

_A/N: I had so much fun writing this fight. So. Much. Also, thanks to **Lady Laconia **for the beta!

* * *

_

Jorge lay on a cold pipe on the less damaged end of the engine room. Looking across toward the interior of the ship, he could see a jungle of dangling cords and cracked pipes where the engine array had been. He had catnapped against the remaining vertical pipes and eaten a small block of the protein rations he had left in his supply pack. The decision of whether or not to share the food with the Elite had been moot since the thing had not shown its face for almost two hours.

Then the footsteps started, and Jorge turned his head slowly to see the Elite stalk across the floor below and jump onto the fallen strut that had so failed to bridge them to a way out. Then the alien disappeared into a tangle of dead pipes, and Jorge saw its silhouette sneak across the girders almost on four feet as it carefully navigated. It wasn't coming his way; probably looking for somewhere to nest down instead.

A memory , then: a wood-paneled ruin of a house on Reach, a place where a family had once sat and at least four marines had died, judging by the pieces scattered around. The rest of Noble Team had ranged around the small farm complex looking for Covenant and survivors, and Jorge had found himself standing beside Six as she bent to pick up a bloodied datapad from the scene of a last stand. The little screen glowed, frozen, on one entry tagged with a name Jorge recognized with a slight shock—Catharine Halsey.

The datapad was some kind of record of communications she had received from an artificial intelligence. Jorge did not understand where this AI had come from, but it was not his task to find out. Six paused over its words, though, and he did too, and one part stuck.

_Space is full of boundless wonders, but it is the gulf between those wonders that has kept our creators alive…If there are wolves among the stars, we cannot rely on mere distance to safeguard our flock._

The Elite's shadow passed by on one red-purple wall, all arched neck and spidery knees.

The ship ruminated to itself like a living thing, ticking in the distance like teeth clicking together. Jorge looked out the force field at the blurred stars dopplering by.

Then the ship shook. It was a little balance-tweaking shiver, something that seemed to push up the ship in waves and pass by. Jorge sat up and braced a hand against the pipes, looking around to see if anything in the room had shifted. Another tectonic sweep set the engine room to rattling and the frayed cords at the end of the fallen strut sparking against each other. Jorge hopped off his resting place and down to the floor, scanning the parts of the area that he could see past the mess of pipes.

The almost-dead hologram in front of him was flickering and changing into new runes. Jorge saw the Elite skid to a stop next to the console, unexpectedly appearing from out of the dead engine.

And then gravity reversed again and sunlight snapped into existence outside the force field and Jorge was falling.

**Relk considered himself **a relatively staunch Sangheili, but knew that most cowards did the same.

So when the ship lurched back into realspace, the barely living diagnostic holograms indicating that something, due simply to gravity, had finally snapped and taken all vestiges of the Solace's power with it, Relk screamed. He hoped that the three hundred pounds of demon plummeting past him though it was a scream of ferocity.

It wasn't, because then Relk was falling too and the blue sheen of the force field—meant to keep air out but allow living beings in—was rushing toward him. He heard a clattering thunk as the demon grabbed onto a dangling pipe.

The stars had almost disappeared and there was so much going on beyond the blue sheen that Relk didn't recognize it for a moment. Covenant starships were made almost as alien to his eyes as humans ones. He was more focused on not falling out of the semi-permeable barrier that was now the floor, and so he desperately twisted around and flailed his legs. One hand hooked the edge of the viewport frame as the ship twisted, gravity changing again, and he held on with all the strength he could muster, fighting a little against the slippery surfaces of his boots as the blue shimmering edge rotated farther away. But then somehow he was safe and huddling at the edge of the barrier, and gravity was turning back around so that he was on the floor and the demon was climbing down a wall of pipes toward him.

Relk took a deep breath and blinked and realized that the Solace was plummeting toward a planet.

It could be seen as a blue globe taking up half the viewport now—some Covenant world, with the shining purple framework of a shipyard orbiting it. Ships were swarming around, probably calling out frantically on comm lines that Relk could not hear. A squad of _atl'ack_, the ships that humans called Seraphs, flashed by, and a larger ship hung like a fortress in the distance. This was a strong Sangheili world.

And the Solace was about to crash into it. The fact that he wasn't in slipspace any more registered briefly on Relk's mind enough to give him the incentive to climb back to the main floor. Maybe he could hail someone from the bridge. He panted as he moved the small door that lead further into the Solace, aiming to put both the vertiginous view and the demon behind him.

Gravity shifted again, and a wall buckled inward beside him. It was possible that someone had just shot the ship. Relk almost fell over and braced himself on the dead computer, his entire mind pointing him to _run away, get back into the strong superstructure and then find some way to call for help_-

(It would be honorable for him to go down with the ship. That would solve a lot of problems but he knew that he wasn't brave enough for that. He still needed to gratify himself by seeing the Prophet see his success-)

His face slammed against his forearms as part of the ship tore itself apart. Suddenly the demon was a dark shape falling again, passing through the blue force field, and Relk growled and rubbed at his sore jaws before lunging toward the interior of the ship, loping frantically away from the wall behind him that was peeling itself apart. He didn't have a vac suit. He was going to be frozen to death in space—

And then a Seraph heeled up against the Solace and poked its nose into the engine room. It nearly occluded the entire force field. Its pilot stuttered the engines, blue flares keeping the ship hanging in place relative to the Solace. Relk felt his mouthparts gape in relief.

He moved over to the organic-looking ship, dodging fallen engine parts as he went. Somewhere, air was escaping the Solace in cold, hissing bursts. He could see space outside, teeming with ships and stars. Relk scrabbled at the door to the Seraph until it opened, revealing a dark blue-armored female Sangheili at the controls. She spoke, and he was almost surprised that he could understand the words. It felt like such a long time since someone had spoken to him. "What are you doing here? By the first—get inside!"

The co-pilot's seat was open; she had scrambled in a hurry. Relk ducked and maneuvered his way into the second seat gratefully.

The pilot was a talkative one. "Your ship came out of nowhere, honorable—sorry, what's your name?"

He gave her the important part. She was really asking for his rank. "'Forsovai."

"Ach! Honored, swordbearer, of course you survived this terrible crash."

Relk winced, glad that she couldn't see him since the seats were placed one behind the other.

She continued. "Proximity alarms started going off all over the place, we thought we'd been attacked. What happened to the Solace, Forsovai?"

"There was a bomb of some kind the demons planted. It sent us into slipspace. What, what world is this?"

"Helionis."

Relk sighed. Civilization!

A small hologram of a lavishly armored fleet leader appeared beside the pilot's left hand. "Gor'Ransou. What's your situation?"

"I have picked up one survivor, a Forsovai." She looked over her shoulder. "Who else survived, swordsman?"

Relk tried to hide behind Gor's seat. "All the rest have died honorably in the service of the Path."

The Solace shivered. Gor cursed quietly and sunk her claws into the holographic controls of the Seraph, pulling the ship and its two occupants out of the ruined engine bay. "I suggest pouring what missiles we've got into this craft, honored one. The Solace is on a collision course with the planet."

"Pity, to kill that ship…."He seemed to be looking at a screen somewhere else. Relk couldn't get much more tense. "But the Prophets command as you do. May all our minds work in harmony, Gor'Ransou. Get out of there. We will send another squad in."

"Your harmony will be achieved," she replied, and gave one quick burst of the Seraph again to draw them out of the Solace. With the noses of both craft pointed toward the Sangheili colony world of Helionis, he could see now how the Solace was pulling away and breaking into meteoric pieces. The demon was nowhere to be seen. Pity if it went down with the ship and he could not prove his prize, but there were worse things….such as Relk going down with the ship.

"Forsovai?" said the voice over the comm. "That name was in the last report of the Solace too."

Relk looked around as if to find somewhere to escape.

Gor said, "And?"

"The final report from the Shipmaster of the Long Night of Solace: the ship was prepared for the assault on Reach and one officer had been sentenced to the brig to await trial for treachery."

Gor turned back to look at him.

"Bring him in," said the terrible disembodied voice of someone down on this planet, this one that Relk was almost _ready_ to let the Solace smash into—"We will detain the exile until further light can be shed on the Solace's final moments."

"I will," said Gor, and turned back to her controls. Relk had not come this far to be turned in by his own people. The Prophet was many stars away and he needed this ship-

"Wait," said Relk, and Gor turned around again.

He lashed out and punched her in the jaw. She recoiled, hands scraping across the controls, as she tried to grab him and fight back. The quarters were too close for proper fighting. Gor slammed Relk's hands against the back of her seat and lashed out, nearly clawing him. He pressed himself against the back of his seat, as far away as possible. "Wait a moment," Relk said. The Solace was sliding past, making it look like the smaller Seraph was moving faster than it was. Other ships had started to gather like a school of fish, bombers rising up from the cloudy depths of the gravity well abyss.

And an armored human hand grabbed the edge of the Seraph's viewport and pulled the hunched, bulky demon into view.


	6. Reach and Helionis

The wind whipped, Relk crouched and put his arms over his head, and flinched like a hatchling when something touched him. But it was Gor, hitting a vac helmet against his forearm, and it wouldn't seal to his armor but he thanked the gods for her as she gave him the only thing that might nearly save him if the demon decided to do the stupid thing it was definitely about to do—

Tear the ship open.

Relk heard seals pop and jammed the helmet down over his head and the back of his neck as Gor was doing the same with hers, whining under her breath. Her hands scratched at the controls, trying to trigger the right runes.

And the demon tore the cockpit door open. He had slung his gun across his back and climbed along the side of the ship, _somehow_. He cracked the door open and Gor hissed and the demon pulled her out of her seat.

Relk lurched forward. Gor might have ruined his anonymity, but she was his way out of here. She braced against the side of the ship and there was _space_ coming in, creating a whirlwind of air so cold that Relk felt his skin cracking, and he only wasn't pulled out because Relk and the demon was in the way. The demon gave a grunt of effort and shifted in one small way that wrenched Gor's arm under his and then she was sliding out of the ship, grabbing for the side and trying to rip with her talons at the demon's face, but it just kept coming. The Solace was dropping away on the left and Helionis was getting larger. Gor slipped out of view with a sickening lurch and a scream. One of the demon's hands was dislodged from the wall of the ship as she passed, and with barely a thought about it, Relk stretched out as far as he could go with the pilot's seat still in front of him and pushed at the demon's other arm, trying to dislodge him. Prize or no prize, it didn't matter, there was this horrible hulking _thing _coming at him and he needed to _kill it _for _Gor'Ransau—_

Except the demon grabbed his arm, its fingers nearly touching around his wrist, and pulled itself into the ship by pulling at his arm and nearly wrenching his shoulder out of place.

The seals automatically tightened, the metal snapping back into place and negative runes flaring into life all across the screens. Relk, trapped, tried frantically to stand up straight and put the pilot's seat between him and the demon.

One armor-powered arm lashed out and grabbed Relk under the jaws. His vac helmet dug into the soft skin there as the demon pushed on it. Hard-edged alien, human words growled out of the flat-featured helmet. Relk clawed at the arm, working scratches in. The demon let go briefly enough for Relk to _think about _ attacking with a slap meant to rattle that helmet, but shoved his elbow against Relk's throat a moment later. Relk felt his throat closing and giving that particular icy pain of a pressured windpipe as the demon pressed its weight against him.

And then the demon pushed Relk away, back into the space next to the two seats and planted a boot on the pilot seat, looming over Relk. Both of them standing up barely fit in the small piloting niche. The demon said something, said it again, looking out from its blank features, and then Relk deciphered the word through the filtering and the accent and the panic.

"_Reach."_

The Covenant had not renamed the world yet. Still tainted by demons, it didn't deserve blessed runes of its own. There would be a ceremony later, a baptism in fire in which the shipmaster would consecrate the world and tell it its name with a glassing laser that scarred tectonic plates. But for now, the Covenant called it its human name too, the ones they had hacked into on the maps when they first found out that humans had the gall to call a corner of the universe their own.

"_Reach."_

The demon stared at him and said, wordlessly, _either I kill you or we both get back to the world we want._

Relk said "Reach," and squirmed into the pilot's seat.

The demon fit with some difficulty behind him. As soon as he surveyed the console, Relk felt panic starting up again. The Seraph was hurtling toward Reach beside the Solace. Half of the console was taken up by warning signals; hull breached, seals resealing, planet approaching, _bombers _approaching—

Relk had not flown in a long time. He was used to the big ships where there were whole squads of people devoted to engines and navigations and weaponry. The cockpit of the Seraph felt like all that had been squished into the span of his arms.

First thing to do was to get to safety. He couldn't even _think_ about slipspace navigation yet. A little angry rune was blinking on the corner of the console, and he only noticed it as he was calming down all the ones that told him the door had unsealed. His hackles were still up from the crackling cold. Ice rime was melting off the doors where the air had frozen. He battened the ship down, calming some of the angry runes and shivering, and then noticed the incoming hail. He activated the comm without thinking about it.

"Gor'Ransou. Remove your ship from around the Solace immediately. Bombers are on approach."

Relk grasped the controls and tipped the Seraph away from the Solace at a steep angle. The bombers were in visual range, framed with holograms of their names and the names of their commanders.

He thought_, this thing sitting behind me killed her_ and was disgusted.

He realized then that he had never switched Gor's visual settings. The controllers on the planet below couldn't see him; they just knew that one of their ships had gone erratic. The officer that Gor had been talking to, though…he could still see Relk.

The voice on the other end said, "Forsovai?"

"Hello," said Relk, and shoved the controls to push the Seraph up off the plane of the ecliptic and away from the spacedocks.

"What's happening in there? I thought I saw a demon."

"You did, sir. That's my prisoner."

The officer's voice grew sharp. Relk could almost see the words written out, the runes sharp-edged. "The Solace's records tell me that you have been stricken from the Path. Returning for your penance?"

_Penance_, if someone _returned_ for it, meant, simply execution. Unless they had been blessed by the Prophets or the Forerunners and came back with a sign of that blessing (and signs from the Forerunners were _extremely _debatable), the only reason to do so would be to be honorably killed.

Relk was not that honorable.

"No sir. Returning for my reward. My Prophet will reward me."

"Return to Helionis for your justice, Forsovai."

Relk said, "No sir."

H e kicked the Seraph into high speed and twisted it as tight as it could curve, away from the planet. Behind him, the first bombers shot their explosives into the nose of the Solace, tearing at the purple plates before a second volley hit. Relk could swear he saw the whole ship jolt backwards, occluding stars that it had seconds ago revealed. The air was filled with the purple and blue of Sangheili craft and their exhaust, and Relk whipped the Seraph through their midst, feeling hesitant on the unfamiliar controls. The demon behind him was silent, but every time Relk thought of it his throat ached.

(And maybe the Prophet would say the same thing that this officer had, and maybe Relk would still be sentenced to die or to fly off into the murky parts of the universe to look for a sign from the gods that had abandoned him and his people. But no. That would be unfair. His work would be rewarded. He thought of the strange, bright, red blood dripping from between demon armor plates.)

The console lit up with negative runes as two other Seraphs swung along the side of his ship, fighting his irradiated wake to slot in behind him. Relk commended the onboard computer to hone in on Reach, and the last recorded location of the Solace for good measure. The front lines were tagged on the Sangheili warrior network, and the runes lit up quickly. But he slid his fingers across the console beneath the holograms, irritated, as he rethought. The Solace's remains were not a resting place. There would be debris there and dangerous gravity currents, or radiation, if any of the main engines were at all intact.

The command to change course had to be verbal, since manual coordinates would take too much thought and time right now. But the first volley of friendly—now enemy—fire was splashing across the shields near his left shoulder, igniting them in blue clouds, and Relk pushed the ship forward and down away from their sights. The demon was saying something but Relk was trying to focus.

He dodged through the trails of even more Seraphs converging on his ship. Shots rattled the walls. Behind him, the Solace was slowly eaten up by fires, while larger ships lifted out of atmosphere to pick up the larger pieces before they could damage the world.

Relk gritted his teeth and looked forward, pushing the Seraph to its limits. He wasn't a pilot. He was a swordsman, and the sticks in his hands handled nothing like the hilt of a blade. He thought about strategizing and ended up wondering what would happen if he just panicked.

So instead he locked the sticks straight and modified the coordinates of their destination, sliding numbers down the scale and intoning to the controls until he was aimed for orbit around Reach, safely outside the ring where the debris would be, but close enough to insert quietly.

And then, of course, the ship shook with an impact.

Lights flared outside, blinding Relk temporarily as he abandoned the last steps of putting the coordinates in and dodged around the plasma that the incoming Seraphs threw at him. The demon behind him grumbled incomprehensibly and leaned forward to look over his shoulder as Relk pushed the Seraph up and down in what he really hoped passed for evasive maneuvers. The shields were failing. It wouldn't be much longer now—

A scrap of metal flew off his Seraph's flank and past the bubble viewports. Relk stared at the console, almost pressing his nose against it, and punched in the last coordinates just as another Seraph fishtailed out in front of his and unloaded a rain of plasma.

The world disappeared, replaced by a tunnel of light. His console configuration changed for slipspace, revealing a ship that could hold together until Reach—barely.

Relk shifted his shoulders against the seat, panting. He blinked a few times to make sure no more Seraphs were going to fly impossibly out of the slipspace tunnel. If they were coming after him now they would have to wait until they all emerged into realspace again. The miasma around him was silent.

Then he leaned back for the long journey ahead of them, the ache of the demon's grip still pressed against his throat.


	7. Travels

_A/N: Just in case any of you actually speak the language, forgive my Google Translate Hungarian. _

**VII.**

Jorge did not always think in English.

For most things, it was his first language. The military had given him its terms in English and so they were; guns and ships and officers. Other things, though, gave him their Hungarian names first. _Csillag, vílag, sziv…_

He looked out the thin edge of viewport in the back seat of the Seraph and examined his reflection. His mask bounced back even more repeated images.

There were weapon controls back here. He pushed a toggle experimentally, and received nothing except a hiss from the Elite in the pilot's chair. Jorge stared down the beady eyes behind the splayed star of jaws and moved his hands away from the controls.

He had nothing to say to the Elite anyway, and neither of his languages would help him.

The Elite growled words that sounded like teeth were gnashing in the process.

"Yeah, yeah," Jorge said. "You ain't my first pick either."

There was one word that didn't need translating. It wasn't a definition; just a name. A little spat syllable worked around on that alien tongue.

The pilot said, "Reach."

"Right." Jorge said. "Reach." He sat back and looked at space again, at the _csillagos _silver, wondering what was happening among the stars. _Where are you, Six? You doing all right? _

He wondered where any of them were—Emile, Halsey, Jun, Kat, the commander. This all would make a story for them, if he survived it. It would make Six smile that he was back.

The ride was quiet and awkward and interminable.

* * *

It lasted a little over ten days. He lost track. Signals faded and were found again.

The Long Night of Solace had been traveling at out-of-control speeds, powered by fusion reactions never intended to take place in its forward engine cores and its halls. Getting back in the Seraph took a more sedate, sane speed.

A speed which meant that both Jorge's and Relk's supplies ran out far more quickly than they had anticipated.

And so they landed on worlds where they were wanted men.

Relk knew Sangheili colony worlds that Jorge had never dreamed of, outposts among the stars where munitions were made or food was grown. He could not, though, show his face there. If the Covenant planetwide networks picked him up, it would be back to the fate that made him twitch and dodge at the thought of his own species. More than once, Jorge followed him through farm fields of strange fruits. When the Spartan could not find food that his suit-mounted computers could analyze as edible, he subsisted on water. He did not weaken—or not quickly.

They could have stopped at human worlds, somewhere where Jorge could link up to his own network and call in aid, but his captor/assistant did not let him. The Elite seemed to ignore Jorge half the time, except for huffed words and the occasional angry gesture. They'd had one fight the first night. It had ended up with Jorge pushing the Elite's face onto the Seraph's console.

And the alien shrugged and offered his neck to be shot and told Jorge, with that shrug, that the Spartan did not know how to pilot a Seraph and could not read its runes.

Then that word again. "Reach."

And the Elite stood up and shook off and kept shaking for a while.

They never learned more than a few words of one another's language. Fellow soldiers knew how to point and signal well enough. Jorge could not create the gargling Elite noises with any success, and the alien's English was about as nuanced as if you tried to teach that language to a bear. The jaw could not get around it.

Jorge gathered what intel he could, but the Elites they visited were civilians. He saw their women and children and their drab clothing with the occasional pendant or bracelet of bright ornamentation. Each one seemed to wear some sort of color.

When Jorge did speak, his voice needed to fight past disuse every time. He had hope, that the Elite was bringing him back to Reach.

And he had threats, and that one word.

The other word they exchanged was _Relk_. When used it was usually paired with other words. "Hey, you, Covvie. Relk."

_Jorge_ sounded like a cough in the Elite's throat and he gave up on it soon after figuring it out.

During another interminable ride in the Seraph, when Jorge wished he was back helping Noble Team, taking care of them, he thought for the first time about whether he had more sympathy for the Covenant now that he had stolen from and slept in their fields.

The answer came down to no. There were civilians and soldiers, and he had no plans to kill Covenant civilians. Nor did he have plans to stop killing Covenant soldiers.

He thought of the Cole Protocol to, but he was not leading Relk back to Earth under any circumstances. They were returning only to Reach, Jorge's home world but not that of his species.

He thought that the Spartans must have regained the planet, now that the supercarrier was destroyed. Maybe the aliens would have brought in more but, this close to Earth, humans would fight for their world like cornered animals, and they would win. He could not discuss this with Relk. They did not have nearly enough words, although one contained them all.

And then one day they jumped again, and slipspace dissolved into the blackness of normalcy, and there was Reach. Jorge could see the great crater-shaped northern bay, like a pockmark. Around it should be the green of forest that the planet showed on all the pictures.

It was gray and rust-red and black-clouded, and there were Covenant ships everywhere. They cruised like sharks, easing around all the curves of the world. Chaining it.

Jorge growled a curse. Relk ignored it like he ignored all of the human's words. The Seraph kept moving, steady and sedate as orange explosions lit the underside of continent-sized clouds.

One word left for both of them, and one word needed.

"Reach."

* * *

Noble Six felt eyes on her.

She stood beside the MAC cannon, golden sunlight glinting off half of her mask and making an abrupt terminator line in front of her eyes where the helmet filters dampened it down. She could sense the Covenant looking at her, tens of alien wolf-eyes peering up at the platform with its broken stairs, their trigger fingers twitching. Maybe Halsey, Keyes, and the little AI spark were looking at her too, far away from out of the windows of the Pillar of Autumn. Maybe Jun or other Spartans from other bases were out there somewhere, peering through familiar masks.

She took a moment to breathe and look out at the brink beyond the spacedocks.

_Someone should take a picture. _

"Smile for the camera," she whispered, and hopped off the platform.

Her team was dead and she could feel two sets of dog tags against her skin and the Covenant were on her before she had a chance to look around and come fully out of a crouch. Three Grunts, two Jackals, maybe a flash of orange in the background between the rocks. Bombardment had changed the landscape into unrecognizable scrub. She sprayed the Grunts with steady fire from her assault rifle, rupturing methane tanks.

It wasn't so much that her life was flashing before her eyes, but that she was trying to figure out what it had all pointed to.

A Jackal dodged behind a boulder, and Six pranced four steps over to grab a better angle and send blood pluming from its neck and shoulder.

There had been direction. She had been constructed for this, brought womb-warm into the after-dark of chemical baths and filled syringes, made unbreakable.

She stepped over the Jackal as it fell and jammed the nose of her rifle against the chest of the next one. Green goo splattered the rusty orange of her gauntlets.

Always direction. There were her parents, first.

_She'd known them long enough to have memories. They had Christmases. They had long walks, where she would run and run and never quite so far that her father couldn't see her, even if she wanted to and _could, _it would be so easy. She had good legs and good lungs even then. They had afternoons and they called her Aislinn. The family moved off Earth and to a new colony where they were paid to settle, far out in space._

_ Then at night people came into their house and said they were going to take their supplies and her father said no and Aislinn hid under a pile of wooden beams that had used to be a wall._

_ She forgot her last name some time after that. _

Six backtracked around the boulder and snapped a new clip into her rifle, scanning for the other Covvies she had seen. The MAC platform was a maze of vertical girders behind her.

Two silver-armored Elites between the rocks.

She unhooked a plasma grenade and threw. The Elites dove, but the blue flare caught one on the legs and burned half its body to blackness. It screamed as she turned around to bring her rifle to bear on the second one.

Which was _right there_, close—Six fired and turned and skidded and fired again and a purple spike sprouted in the corner of her vision, along with a steady drip of pain. The Elite fell. She turned and saw another Jackal with a quiver full of needles.

_There's a needle in my cheek. It's going to—_

Always direction.

_She was taken out of Beta Company and given to another man who was quieter and skinnier than Kurt Ambrose, her trainer, and she was told to kill for this man. He outranked most of the UNSC soldiers she had encountered in her life. With him, through no effort of her own, she avoided the operation that killed almost all of Beta Team._

_ With him, she earned "hyper-lethal"._

_ They were solo missions, little excursions with a sniper rifle magnetized to her back where she took out human insurrectionists and then returned, bloodied and cleaned up again, to stand by the office door like a bodyguard. She would salute when anyone walked past and she would think. _

_ And then he would lean out and say "Spartan-312, there is a task for you."_

_ Here, she learned that speech was not really necessary._

_ Some of the insurrectionists she took out with a quick shot to the head or an elbow to the temple, almost silent. Some of them were hyped up on rumbledrugs, and these taught her things._

Six pulled the needle out of her mask and threw it. It exploded in a puff of purple fire and now there was a crack in her helmet, a spiderweb like a gunshot through glass. Her assault rifle was nearly out of ammunition and there was an opening right there in the landscape in front of her, a spot in the hurrying, cackling team of enemies where she could escape up the cliff and maybe find a spot to gain some advantage. The needle-cut stung and she wondered how deep it was and how much blood she was losing. She could feel it, lukewarm in the controlled environment of the helmet but pushing its amorphous weight along her cheek.

Retreating would be too slow. She popped another grenade—her last, a UNSC frag bomb—and lobbed it between two of the Jackals. It caught both and Six spun and for a moment there was peace, with her one foot propped up on the slope and her eyes scanning at the exact level of her targeting reticule, covering with the assault rifle.

_It was years, and it feels like such a short time but she remembers the Falcon controls and the way the other pilots talked. They taught her that talk could be a way of surviving just like silence could. She still conserved her words, but people started saying that the little she did say made them laugh. It was a way to surprise somebody; for a Spartan to snark. Sometimes people didn't know whether they were allowed to be funny, and her Falcon squad found that the funniest of all._

Six backtracked a few more steps up the hill. The MAC cannon was surprisingly far away, more than a good sprint, even if it had been useful to her.

Then the orange-armored Elite lunged.

It had been behind a boulder or out of mind and it tackled her. She spun to the ground with it, shoved it off, sprayed it with gunshots. She got to her feet and there was another one, two meters away, firing plasma—

Six dodged the green blasts and returned fire, pushing down the trigger until the ammo counter went red. She dropped the rifle and pulled the pistol from her hip, readying it in one smooth pull while she tried to put a rock between her and the Elite. One? More? Her HUD was filled with red dots and then it was gone when something cracked across the back of her head and she closed her eyes for just a second before turning and shooting an Elite three times below the ribs. The first one was still approaching behind her; it fired and the green splash covered up her vision. Her visor was a network of cracks, two impact points reaching toward each other. She tugged the helmet off and dropped it as she moved to fire and felt her blonde hair tickle her cheeks. There was no time to push it back into place.

She watched the Elite approach, trading its plasma gun for a sword as it laughed at her with its insane grunting laugh. She aimed at the patch of skin on the shoulder of its sword arm.


	8. Aislinn

**VIII.**

Relk 'Forsovai had never been so proud.

He accepted that he had no part in this war, but inside him there was still the pride of the Elite. The loss of the Long Night of Solace had not been a debilitating setback. He could see that in the ships cruising calmly around Reach, not concerned about picket lines too strictly. That could only mean that there were no free humans left to escape.

This planet would be purified soon. The Covenant devout would no longer have to feel dirty when they looked at it.

There were two people with sufficient rank to undo his exile, neither of whom were likely to be on the ground: the commander of the Fleet of Particular Justice, Thel 'Vadamee; or the Prophet of Inspiration, ensconced on the flagship Truth and Reconciliation. However, he would not be allowed into either of their ships if anyone else in the Sangheili ranks discovered his identity.

Both problems could be solved if he found 'Vadamee on the front lines. A Sangheili leader, especially one with the ferocity and drive of a swordsman, would not be lurking on a ship above his planet. He would want to be down below, throwing splatters of human blood with every swing—

Except that, judging from the state of the planet, there would not be many humans left.

Gor's Seraph could not patch into the military channel that the invasion fleet was using without Relk having to talk to someone in person, but its computer could find hotspots of activity, where the most life signs were gathered. He pulled up a holographic map, yellow lifesigns scattered across it like its population—except the population had gone. The house had been emptied, and the Covenant were moving in. Each yellow life sign was a triumphant warrior, not simply a human inhabitant who had dared to scrape at the dirt of a world that was not theirs.

Areas marked as human cities showed the most Covenant activity, but there was one other spot that seemed anomalous; slightly inland of a cove on the northern hemisphere. Covenant troops were moving there rapidly, and the only other information that the computer could give was that it had been a human starship factory, an installation of their military.

That was the hotbed of activity on Reach right now, and so Relk angled the Seraph for it.

* * *

The loss of a world could not set in. Maybe it would, given enough time, and maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would feel different for a mainline human, and maybe not. And maybe, in this, Spartans were the same as the rest of their breed.

Jorge saw _maybes _as some distant thing that he didn't need to worry about.

( Except there was that _aged _feeling again, like maybe he had finally seen _too much of this_ and his bones were aching, serving the same purpose as a warning light on a dashboard.)

He heard a harsh crackle next to his ears as his UNSC comm channels started working again, but there was no one talking; just the white noise of distances too great for signals to travel through. Relk was bringing the Seraph quickly down through the atmosphere, white clouds obscuring the viewports. They dipped down and flew over burnt-brown ground, and Jorge activated Noble Team's personal channel and spoke almost without thinking about it. "This is Noble Five. Who's out there?"

White noise.

Jorge growled, and grabbed a handful of the leathery front seat to pull himself into a better place to see the Elite pilot. "Where are we going?"

No reply except the turning of the Elite's head as it watched the screen. Jorge felt questions waiting in the back of his mind, but they were just that—waiting. He would see to them later. (_What happened after the slipstream bomb? Why did the last fleeing ship not leave a distress signal? Where is the rest of Noble Team, or the Spartan Threes stationed at Rally Point Omega? Where's _Six?)

The Seraph sloped down and followed the lines of the ground, and Jorge grumbled at Relk's side. "Where are you headed?"

(It would be so easy just to smash the Elite's head in. _Kill him now, take control of the ship. They'll all be killed for this. Jorge will have his planet back._)

But a handful of deep breaths later, Jorge saw where Relk was heading. An entire Covenant squad was heading in one determined direction toward a landscape of rippled hills. Two Banshees accompanied a phalanx of foot soldiers of every combatant Covenant species Jorge knew of. Relk chattered into his commlink, maybe telling him that he was coming down to say hello.

Jorge tried to track ahead of them with his eyes, obscured as the angle was by the belly of the Seraph beneath him. He looked at the whorls of hills below the horizon, trying to figure out where the squad was headed. Maybe Noble Team had gained a tank and survived, or Halsey had given them some technological secret so that they could keep going in this wasteland…

At first he couldn't see anything in the way of the path the Covenant were scouring. Then he narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on one dot of movement. There were flashes of light as from discharged weapons; what kind or fired by whose hands, he couldn't tell. He tried the comm again. "This is Spartan-052, Noble Five. Who is that down there?"

No response came. The Seraph's wings tipped unexpectedly onto almost a forty-five degree angle as Relk brought them down toward the Covenant line, his growled communications getting increasingly frantic. The ground gained texture and relief.

Jorge craned his neck to try to keep the line of sight he had been working on, and saw a darting figure chased by strings of gold. One Spartan under fire, orange-armored, dodging around rocks and over hills of pebbles. He recognized her from the color immediately. He had been scanning for any of them; gunmetal gray, green, sea-blue, sky-blue, had barely begun to hope that he might best look out for this sunflash orange.

He leaned over the back of the pilot's seat and latched onto Relk's shoulders with crushing force. The Elite jerked back in surprise, yowling at him now instead of at the comm. Jorge was close enough to see the scales at the back of Relk's neck twitch.

The Seraph had been angling right, close enough to the ground now that he could see bushes and individual Covenant faces, and just starting to level out. Jorge bore down on Relk's left shoulder so hard that he felt it scrape in its socket. Relk's jaws snapped.

"That way," Jorge growled, "or I kill you where you sit and let my armor survive the crash."

Relk didn't get it. Jorge lifted his right arm and smacked the side of Relk's head with his gauntlet. The Elite's shoulder went slack as, not knowing what direction he was supposed to be taking, Relk just gave in under the pain. (Jorge thought that this was an instance in which subtle would have worked better, but it was _Six_ down there, and he needed to _hurt_ something before they hurt her.) He kept one eye on the ground, looking for other Spartans. Relk hacked out his approximation of Jorge's name but couldn't manage anything else, and twisted the Seraph's controls back toward the right. The wind was screaming in the wings now and the ground hurtling up too fast. Jorge's ears popped with a sharp rush.

The world jolted. Jorge felt the same MJOLNIR gel that amplified his movements dull his momentum now, providing a giving surface even as his head and shoulders rocked. Brown dirt plumed up to cover the viewports and clattered down like flak, bouncing off the suddenly opaque material. Jorge squeezed his eyes shut and forced them open again. His grip had been dislodged from Relk's shoulders when he curled against the back of the seat almost in a fetal position.

The Elite shook his head, coughing. Alien blood, maybe from Jorge's gauntlet and maybe from the Seraph's console, caked the right side of his face over his eye. He lashed out with his right hand and popped the cockpit seals. Dirt fell inside with a soft shushing sound, and Relk gave a quiet yowl of pain from the back of his throat.

"Move. Move!" Jorge pushed at the back of Relk's seat, unable to squeeze past without him moving first. The Elite looked back at him and hissed, a full, open-mouthed battle cry of hatred that Jorge had not seen on him since their first meeting.

Maybe Jorge's opinion of the Elite had changed a little bit in their travels together, since he thought "_you don't understand" _instead of something simply insulting.

Another Elite head, garbed in clean blue-gray armor, appeared outside the viewport just in front of the Seraph's second strut as its hands shoveled away the dirt. Relk pushed up, opening the canopy far enough that he could wriggle through if he really tried. The Elites babbled at each other. Jorge moved, just a tiny shift toward standing up, and the newcomer had a plasma rifle pointed at him so fast that he barely saw it unhook from its wielder's hip.

Luckily, there wasn't much that could be faster than a Spartan.

"Sorry," Jorge muttered, and grabbed the back of Relk's armor with both hands, hooking into a seam and pushing him directly out the half-open canopy into the line of fire. Luckily for all involved, the second Elite did not fire while Relk was in its way.

Relk scrambled out of the way frantically. For a moment it seemed like he was going to just plain run away, his arms pumping and head low. Jorge started climbing out of the Seraph.

The blue-armored Elite shot him in the face.

The plasma splashed across his faceplate. His shield levels plunged into the red, cuing warning beeps. His turret gun was still behind him in the Seraph, and the modifications he'd done to the MJOLNIR to serve as Noble's walking supply cache meant he was without other weapons. (There was room for a knife, but Jorge didn't like knives. People like Emile prefered being close enough to their kills to feel the blade twist; Jorge did not particularly enjoy it.)

But had been chosen to be a Spartan. He had to enjoy the fight a little.

So he punched the Elite in the jaw, scraping across its lip with the metal sealing bars on his gauntlet. His other hand wrapped around its neck as he heaved himself out of the ship. It fired again, and Jorge rolled to the side. The plasma pack burned itself out against the skin of the Seraph, and the Elite's neck didn't quite crack as Jorge wrenched it over him. It was dazed, and lay there twitching its arms until Jorge grabbed the plasma gun from its limp arms and finished the job.

Relk had disappeared. By the time Jorge fished his turret gun out of the wreck of the Seraph, there was a mixed group of Covenant headed for him around the furrows the starship had dug.

He downed the first one with a swing of the turret gun, smacking the butt of it across the Jackal's jaw. On the return swing he hooked his hand around the trigger and fired, counting down with grim certainty as the little ammunition he had left dwindled. Two Jackals and an Elite fell. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. His helmet comm crackled, and he replied almost without thinking. "Hey, Six?"

There was no reply. But she was on his HUD now, a little yellow dot in the top corner of the field. He stepped in that direction and plasma shots peppered the ground around him. He turned and there was Relk, standing on a hillside in front of an Elite with one hand stretched out and a small plasma gun clutched in his three fingers. His other hand was held out straight in front of the Elite next to him; an attempt at an order. _Don't shoot. This one is mine. _

The other one wasn't having any of that. It shrugged out from behind Relk's arm and fired too. Jorge's shield dipped back into the red.

* * *

Noble Six, the woman known for most of her life as Aislinn-312, didn't have a chance to fire before the Elite swordsman was upon her. The split teardrip-shaped weapon swept up from left to right, humming as it parted the air. The cold afternoon was surprisingly biting against her bare cheeks. Fighting without the MJOLNIR mask dizzied her for a moment as she dodged the first strike, stepping over an ankle-high rock the soft, bubbled tan of concrete—it might once have been part of the MAC emplacement.

The sword sliced past her right side, and she shot the Elite twice in the shoulder with her pistol. The first shot pinged off its armor and left a smoking trail; the second barreled through its wake and was also deflected by the armor, grazing the Elite's shoulder blade. The sword swung back again and Six shifted uphill. Her next shot speared the Elite through the collarbone, and its eyes bugged, but it kept coming. The sword's arc looked too long to dodge. She crouched, ready to feel the sweep of it over her head.

A purple-nosed, smolder-tailed starship flew out of the sky behind the Elite, descending far too rapidly and bleeding far too much smoke to be under control. Its growl filled the air. Six raised her chin; the Elite twitched its head to the side to look around.

In its moment of distraction, Six shot again and got the Elite at center mass. It wavered, but reached out and grabbed a corner of her armor at her collar and pulled as it collapsed.

Six fell on its sword.

She felt the blade cut painlessly hot into her hip and carve like a steak knife. Impact-roar and metal-scream from the other side of the hill told her that the starship had gone with gravity's natural course and crashed. Six jerked away off the energy sword and shot the Elite again in the throat at close range, the flak jumping up and stinging in the cut on her face. Her other hand grabbed the Elite's wrist and forced the sword away from both of their bodies as the alien died, so that when she fell it was harmlessly, and onto the Elite's chest and arm.

It was when she got up, in one adrenaline-fueled push designed to give her a proper field of vision as soon as possible, that the pain started.

Her leg collapsed under her weight, and the jolt started the fierce, angry burn. Six looked down instantly, cupping her thigh guard in her left hand and hefting the pistol in her right.

There was blood sheeting across the thigh guard, and a dark gash stretching from her kidney to the middle of her leg. The pain made her yowl and shake her head, tears threatening her eyes. Either Spartan chemicals or natural propensity erased any thoughts of panic from her mind; she needed to find out what had happened and do something about it, even as the pain was running laps around her ability to rationalize. She pushed it to the side, chasing it with a smaller pain as she bit one canine tooth into the inside of her lip.

_Diagnose. Treat. Keep fighting. Find out what that starship crash means for me? _

She shifted her hip. It felt like her side was going to rip open, but mobility was intact. The blade had perforated the top half of her thigh and bit into the band of muscle on her side under her ribs, missing any organs by inches. (Probably. She wasn't sure what a sliced kidney would feel like but it might just feel like this.) She screamed through clenched teeth and put all her weight on her left knee, then flipped open a belt pouch for a canister of biofoam.

The spray felt cool and stung, and then all feeling in her hurt leg and side was replaced with the gooseflesh feeling of numbness. She piled more of the foam on, its smell tickling her nose. Other Covenant soldiers moved through the field of boulders toward the crashed spaceship, and Six tracked them with her gaze. None seemed bothered by her presence. _I'm walking wounded and there's a variable on the field. They're going to check it out and I should too._

She considered, for just a second, doing the opposite. She could not go back to Sword Base and heal; this was the body she had left. She should run, while the Covenant were distracted, and see if she could find a cave or standing structure.

But the Covenant were everywhere, and running was out of the question.

She grunted as she tried to stand, pushing with that hands and knees as she dragged her wounded leg up and tried to keep it ramrod straight so that the biofoam would harden and she could stop feeling beestings of pain deeper in her side than could possibly be good. Covenant clustered just over the rise; she could see the bobbing tops of their heads.

Six stumbled her way up the hill.

* * *

Relk needed some kind of control. Everything else was so very out of his hands right now, but this demon was _his. _

At the peak of the hill, he pushed back in front of the Sangheili next to him. "Stop. This one is my hostage."

"This one is the enemy," the soldier said.

And then an armored arm snaked around his neck, the forearm enclosed in a red-orange gauntlet and the fingers splayed. The arm tucked against his neck and pulled, jerking him backwards. Another arm wrapped around from the other side and pushed a knife into his neck just below the jaw. The Sangheili spluttered and collapsed, leaving a bright-colored demon standing beside Relk on the hilltop, the blood-coated knife in its hand.

Jorge looked up from where he had been retreating, armor faintly smoking from three or four plasma burns. Relk scooped up the fallen Elite's plasma rifle and pointed it at the new demon. He hadn't thought there were any more alive on Reach!

The orange demon, medical foam adhered to its left side like a fungal growth, hit him in the hand and drove an elbow into his face. Then it promptly collapsed, stumbling once before its legs gave out and its slid its own body-length down the hill on a fall of dirt and pebbles.

Jorge shot at Relk. Bullets whistled past, and he effected his original plan without even pausing to finish off the second demon; he ran-

straight down the back of the hill, and almost into a tall, blue-gray armored Sangheli. This one didn't budge when Relk tried to keep going past him. Instead, he stepped in front of Relk and stood there like a parent, waiting for his child to give an explanation for all this ridiculous behavior.

Relk said, "Thal'Vadamee?"

The Sangheili said, "Who are you? Were you attached to _Truth and Reconciliation_?"

Relk thought he might have a chance to lie about his name until a third Sangheili strode up, this one wearing the spindly accouterments of a communications officer and peering at him through a lens of holograms. "Relk'Forsovai," this one said. "Exile."

"I brought you a _demon_," Relk said. "Right over there. Let me speak to your commander."

"We'll have time for that," said the Sangheili whom Relk was pretty sure was not Thal'Vadamee, due to his rank colors. This was a field commander, part of a squad designed to hold captured ground, not press forward into it. The larger battle was done. "There are two of them, and a lot of us." He tipped his head to the side, quizzically. "And one of you." He turned to the communications officer. "What have you found?"

"That Seraph should have been piloted by a Gor'Ransou out of Helionis. You don't look like a Gor."

"They're escaping!" Relk looked frantically back toward the other side of the hill. His demon, his proof, was over there—

The gray-armored giant grabbed him by the upper arm. "They will be taken care of."

Relk stilled with a sudden realization. They _would _be. One of the many patrols working this planet over would find them. Relk would get none of the credit.

He struggled, pulling free of the field commander's grip before he stumbled into the communications officer's and started pushing him.

"Get me some Kig-Yar," the field commander said under his breath, and two ran over the crest of the hill, holding their tall, shameful shields in front of them. He gestured, and they surrounded Relk.

If he could just distract them, his demon might get away and Relk could retrieve him later and keep him alive long enough to tell, under torture or whatever was necessary, who exactly had captured him.

Captured was a loose word for it, yes, but the demon didn't speak enough Sangheili to know the difference, and Relk bet that neither the field commander nor any of his cohorts spoke enough Human. All he needed was a nod.

So he fought, banging against the blue shields until one of them turned pink and their ranking officer called in more Sangheili soldiers to escort Relk'Forsovai, deserter and probable murderer of Gor'Ransau, away.


	9. Reunion

_A/N: So I just watched Halo: Legends, which was very entertaining and didn't contradict anything about the Elites that I've done, anyway. I'm still not quite sure how much of that was canon. But Daisy is my new fave.  
_

_Many thanks to **Lady Laconia**, who conned me into letting her read the chapters first-I mean, betareads for me.  


* * *

  
_

**IX.**

Six and Jorge were back-to-back on the battlefield, him standing and her crouched on one knee with a dull ache working its way up through her bent left leg. Grunts attacked in waves, and the Spartans shot them. For Six, it felt like Jorge had never left.

Spartan team mentality had snapped over her like a new mask. In her mind's eye there was a new yellow dot where she had thought there wouldn't be any, and she joined up with him like the fighter pilot she had once been bringing her Falcon into a flying V; smoothly coordinated and fiercely impersonal. They picked off Grunts like cardboard stands at a firing range, and then one tossed a grenade off the top of the hill.

She tried to kick up off the ground and couldn't do it. Her leg simply would not respond. She wavered, and then Jorge's forearm was out as a brace in front of her and she grabbed onto him. He got his arm around her waist and grabbed hold of her belt, throwing both of them forward and out of the way.

The grenade exploded into blue sparks behind them. Six shook her head, hearing flak patter out of her hair.

* * *

Jorge looked around and back, fighting against lifting Six's weight on one side and the turret gun's on the other. But she was sitting up herself, one hand still tight around her pistol, and he released his grip on her service belt. She looked at the pistol quizzically, as if surprised that she had managed to keep her weapon in hand, and with that one look he felt Spartan team-sense melt away. She was in danger and he cared for her. He was glad, moreso than he could express, that it was her who he had found first, if any of the others were even alive. He felt a smile start that he couldn't control and she couldn't see.

One Grunt was left, and it ran over the crest of the hill, waving its arms frantically as it disappeared. It would be back, but his HUD was no longer crowded with enemies. They had clustered on the far south edge of the radar, moving neither toward him nor away.

He said, "Let's get out of here." It was good to be able to speak English and assume that the person next to him could understand it. Six looked at him over her shoulder, her missing helmet letting him see the mix of emotions that skirled across her face. There was relief in her wide, green eyes and _we're not out of this yet_ in her pert jaw. Something had sliced across her cheek and left a shallow cut caked with black-dried blood.

She said, "I can't walk."

Without pausing to look at his HUD, Jorge slug his armored backpack off and set it in the dirt next to his turret gun. He knelt down in front of Six and with a minimum of words exchanged she got her arms around his neck and he lifted her up, supporting her with one crooked arm. He bent again to heft the pack and gun in one hand. (The food supplies were nearly gone; the ammunition was holding up well enough. He could redistribute later and get rid of the pack. They had to get out of here now, while the Covenant were distracted by the news Relk was bringing them.)

Even a Spartan-II was not designed to take so much weight for an extended period of time, and Jorge felt the strain and the resistance from the pack and gun deep in his shoulders. Six was at least two hundred pounds of dead weight that he could carry comfortably, as long as she lay evenly over his back, for all the time in the foreseeable future.

Spartan-IIs were designed to work in such a way that, as Jorge set out across the torn landscape of Reach in the opposite direction from the Covenant huddle, he wasn't even thinking about any of the weight he was carrying. He just started walking.

He didn't plan on stopping any time soon.

Six locked her right hand around her own left wrist and tucked her head against his shoulder. "They'll see us. I've got a hologram left. Drop me if you need to; I'll do the same job well enough."

"They're distracted. Not looking for single lifesigns."

He walked between two hillsides and kept moving in the depression between them. The red dots dwindled away. White starship contrails arched overhead and Jorge looked up whenever he saw one, but experience told him that they would only come down if ground troops told them to.

Six shifted. "You're not dead."

He laughed with the relief of that. "I missed you, Six." He wished he could embrace her or even turn to see her, but he needed to walk. To trek across what had once been Reach, if he could not possibly give this dead-brown ground that name—

Yes. It was still the same.

"We thought you were dead." Six said. She was very quiet. He needed to get them out of her before looking at her leg. She had sealed the bleeding well enough; he felt no change in the biofoam against his forearm. Soon, though, the wound would need to be secured more thoroughly before it took more of her strength with it.

She said, "We were going to say something, but by the time we all got a chance to breath there was Kat—" Her voice hitched. One hand flattened against his chestplate.

He turned and leaned his cheek against her forehead, soothing her with her name.

She said, "How are you _here_?"

"Slipspace bomb took half the Solace, accelerated the other half. I got stuck there with this Elite, Relk—you saw him. Scared him half to death, I think. Not the bravest one, Relk."

"You _named_ him?"

"He had the name before I got there. It knew how to get the ship out of slipspace, and then we went half over the universe in that Seraph you saw. All to get back here." He couldn't keep the sadness out of his voice, but he wasn't the sort to mourn; not even over his world.

"Just in time." Her arms gripped each other again as she secured her hold around his neck. Her face blurred as she leaned closer and kissed the side of his helmet. He turned toward her but could not feel her warmth.

"What happened to you?" he said quietly.

"Needle cut on the cheek. I don't think it's deep. Sword cut on the leg. That one…is."

That wasn't what he had been asking about but he went with it and grimaced. "We'll get you fixed up."

He wondered if maybe he was dreaming it. If, whenever they had a chance to camp, he would go to sleep beside her and wake up in the damaged engine room of the Long Night of Solace.

He had a sinking feeling that it was no perfect dream, though, no fantasy cooked up in delirium. There was more. She didn't want to talk about it, but there was more.

He asked, "Where's the rest of the team, Six? Where's Halsey?"

He felt a shallow coldness that had, in his childhood before the change, been the deep chill of fear.

She mumbled something, and her head slumped forward on her neck. Her vital signs remained steady, the little blue tag that said her name—that said 'S312', anyway—bobbing in the corner of his vision.

He sighed and kept walking.

* * *

Aislinn had to work hard to lift her head up off Jorge's shoulder to watch the horizon marching by.

Her arms had been locked around his neck for so long that they started to tingle at the elbows. He kept slogging on, long, smooth steps with the occasional hitch where the ground had been torn. The sky was gray-yellow. Her cheek wound had matted and dully ached, but she wasn't dizzy any more.

It wasn't worth asking when they were going to stop. It would be when they found safety.

His voice rumbled. "Eyes in the sky," confirmation that he knew she was awake. He hurried up, heading toward mountains in the distance.

"On your HUD?"

"Yeah."

She shook her head, feeling light without hers.

"Who survived, Six?" Jorge asked. It was casual, almost brusque. It was Spartan, the way he asked.

She said, "Maybe Jun. He went with the team to escort Halsey offplanet."

He waited to hear about the others. She knew that he would be relieved to hear about the doctor.

She didn't have anything else to say.

She leaned her forehead against the armor of his shoulder, wishing for just a moment that she could see his face. Then she reminded herself of how essential the HUD was at this point. They were literally striding across a war zone, in plain sight. The only thing keeping them alive was the fact that a planet was a big place, and the Covenant thought they had won.

Maybe Jun and Halsey were out there somewhere, but Six had already tried to raise the sniper on the comm before Emile left her. No noise.

Aislinn pressed closed lips against Jorge's scuffed red shoulder armor as she rested her head.

* * *

She fell asleep sometime between then and the glass scar. She woke up to peer over Jorge's shoulder and see the ground at her feet reflect her face back at her. Her hair was matted and hung in front of her eyes; when she brushed it away with one hand it fell back again, heavy with dried blood.

"Here we are," said Jorge. Six was not sure whether he knew she was awake or not. He spoke as to an animal or a child, to reassure it. "Here we are." Words for Reach's glassed ground. The Covenant had burnt miles of it, for no reason that Six could understand. It was flat and reflective, green and blue and brown not quite to the horizon. There was tumbled ground in the distance. Maybe there had been a mountain range there a week ago, and maybe it was the new, scabbing edge of a wound.

Jorge walked around the edges of the glass wasteland with the same slow, steady pace. He felt Six move and asked her if she was doing all right.

"I'm fine. The head wound is just a scratch."

"I checked that one first."

He must have stopped at some point. "Thank you." Pause. "I'll be walking soon enough."

His arm tightened around her thighs. The surface wound stretching from her kidney to the middle of her femur was numb, packed with field foam and painkiller/disinfectants.

Jorge said, "We'll get you fixed."

He kept on walking like it was no trouble at all to carry her. She watched their watery reflections go by on the scar and wondered whether he was talking to her or Reach.

Her cheek had made a warm spot on his armor plating and she pressed her face against it to soak up the heat. With nothing to say and no answer to what had happened to the team she started writing obituaries. "Kat died soon after we lost you. Covenant ship. Just…overhead, it was just there, and we were on the move."

She hoped he was reacting, but she could not see his face or feel the slump of his shoulders beneath the MJOLNIR shell.

"Carter, in a Pelican. Protecting Emile and I. I had an AI then, one we were supposed to deliver to the Pillar of Autumn. It was holding some important information for Halsey." She paused and watched the mountains—real ones, not slag kicked up in the glassing—get closer.

She thought that he must want to ask about Halsey, but stayed quiet because he knew that she was finally talking about it and might only do it twice; once for him and once for the debriefing she hoped they would go through at the end of all of this.

"Emile. An Elite with a sword. He said he was ready and then was just, just poised there, like a piece of meat on a stick." Jorge turned his face toward her and she shifted to lean against the helmet plate. "And then he went down fighting. And Jun is MIA. Really. Not dead, like in the propaganda."

The ground got steep and stones shifted under Jorge's feet and rolled down the hillside. He was looking for something, but it was hard for Six to look up out of the bloodied side of her face and the sunlight seemed too bright, like she was seeing it without a HUD for the first time. (She was not.)

But then the sunlight faded and the scar was far out of view, ridges and pathways of rock away. There was a comfortable cave in the rock, a tunnel with a defensible entrance and a small water-carved room set off it. With the tectonic shifts in the glassing it was possible that the cave would stay dry no matter the weather. Jorge ducked to get inside.

"Here." He set her down against the bright tan wall of the cave, letting her arms move from around his neck slowly. She sat and rotated her shoulders, her wrists; the joints were no longer complaining. Spartans healed fast.

She watched him as he crossed the sandy floor and put his helmet down. He hadn't been able to shave while he was away. Patches of hair at his temples were gunmetal gray.

He walked back over to her and she stood up, keeping all her weight off her torn side and bracing one hand against the wall.

He put his arms around her and she reached up to finally press her warm cheek against his warmer one and kiss him. She said, "That's not just for surviving." He tightened his grip and she settled into a comfortable place tucked up against him between the chest and arm plates.

* * *

Relk had never been this close to a Prophet before. He hadn't expected the smell.

The field commander and his armed escorts followed Relk into the antechamber with weapons trained on his back. It wasn't much of an antechamber, really. Lacquer had been applied to human wall structures, in what Relk felt was a shameful display of carrion-grubbing. It looked like some of the walls could be pushed over by an Unggoy. The smell, though, was all Covenant; a heady, musky reek without discernable location. It just came from everywhere. It should have been homey. It wasn't.

The warriors glared at Relk until he sat down on a bench that was, unlike the rest of the place, reassuringly solid. It might have been poured from glimmering flowstone yesterday.

He looked up at the field commander and spoke, latching on to the one hope he thought he had. "I have to talk to your Prophet or your fleet commander."

The big Elite folded his arms. "The Fleet of Particular Justice set off in search of the ship carrying the last demon. Thal'Vadamee and the Prophet of Inspiration went with it." His tone indicated that Relk ought to have known this already. "I am Kas'Orogai, field commander and guard of the Prophet's temporary headquarters…when Its Exaltedness was here."

Relk gestured with a clawed hand. "So who can I talk to?"

"_Me_. Where have you been, exile?"

Relk started to hate Kas's stone-grey armor and the way the scales on his cheeks shaded to a lighter brown, giving him an idiotic blush. He said, "I've been trying to get back _here. _I would have rolled that demon's bloody head to your feet if you hadn't interrupted me."

The was probably a total lie, but Relk was angry.

To his surprise, Kas ignored that. Instead, he gained a far-away look and seemed to stare up through the bare boards of the ceiling. "Demons. All chased away soon. Our _Particular Justice_ is after the one that fled to space, Relk, and the others are here. Surrounded by our forces. We do not have anything to fear from them. This world will be safe again."

At the same time as Relk thought _So this is what a real fanatic looks like_, he began to feel the peace that Kas spoke of. It would be so _nice_ not to have to fear the demons in the dark. As much as his people talked of bravery, Relk thought that's what it all stemmed from; fear. But soon, there would be no one to prevent the Sangheili from spreading out into the galaxy and raising their families in peace. No foolish aliens would try to stop the natural course of things.

Relk felt his posture relax a little. He slumped against the bench despite his own anger and knew that, even though he did not always agree with the others who walked the Path, that he always wanted to walk it. It would bring him rest.

He nodded. "And until then…."

"We will see what becomes of you, exile." And Kas lunged forward, grabbed Relk by the neck, and picked him up.

Relk's legs kicked frantically as he arced his neck to try to keep his forehead from slamming into Kor's shoulders. The armed guard closed in around them, plasma rifles pointed at Relk. All the religious serenity had faded out of Kor's eyes. He was a jailer now.

"Hey. I brought you—" Relk started. Kor threw him onto his tailbone on the floor of the Prophet's chamber.

"We'll take care of everything." Kor's weak cheeks bunched as he bared his teeth in an open-mouthed Sangheili grin. "You'll wait until we hear from the fleet."

The other Sangheili backed out, leaving Relk sitting on the floor of an asymmetrical, empty chamber. He smacked one fist against the lukewarm lacquer. His plan would have been _perfect_, if the demons hadn't escaped. Somewhere out there was his hope. Two demons.

And instead of finding them, he was sitting in a cell. Again.

This time, the cell smelled strongly of San 'Shyuum.


	10. The Church Inside the Mountain

**X. **

Jorge said, "I'm glad you're here." Six leaned her cheek against the wide plate on his arm for a brief moment before they separated. Jorge moved away for a time while she fixed her wound and watched the cave mouth, her right hand tensed to go for her pistol. She shifted armor plates around and reclipped them around her leg, firmly securing the biofoam so that it ached with the tightness but no longer felt like it was about to tear open. Daylight was fading, leaving the sky scarred with stars.

Six sat back against the wall and started to work at the edges of her torn armor, wriggling the plates where their normal locking mechanism had been wrenched out of shape. He brought her an emergency health pack from his backpack and patched the wound. Her armor was compromised; she glimpsed the skin along her thigh and quickly wrapped it with bandage. Jorge sat back on his heels and watched the mouth of the cave, and Six finished her work and clipped the bandage in place. It hurt when she pushed at the skin but not otherwise, and she thought that might be a bad thing. But then, Spartans were almost resistant to infection; their immune systems had to be good to survive the augmentation.

It would be a long time until she got a chance for proper care and a shower, if that ever happened.

Jorge said, "There might be other survivors."

She watched him speak, traced the concern at the edge of his mouth and the scar down across his eye. He always had some softness in his voice when he spoke to her, some reassurance.

She said, "The emergency broadcast said Rally Point Omega. Other Spartans are meeting there."

"Yes. Should travel at night; the Covvies will be quieter then. People without Spartans…." He shook his head. "Let's see what we find."

There was silence for a time; Six nodded despite herself. She looked over her shoulder when she heard Jorge's footsteps move back across the floor. He looked grim and tired. He had taken off his backpack and armor plates, so that when he leaned against her back and put his arms around her she could feel the warmth of him against her neck. The silence was all she needed after the gunfire and long walk.

She had missed him as she trekked across the world with the rest of the team, but especially at the end, when it was just her and Emile in the water-sculpted caverns.

She had missed him as Halsey handed her the little sparking AI cylinder and she had thought of how much smaller the doctor's hands were than hers.

The darkness moved slowly down the sky outside, making the cold air seem colder. Six nestled against Jorge, feeling calm and quiet. He looked down at her fondly and kissed the side of her head, and she unclipped the seals at the small of her back to work off the heavy burnt-orange first layer of her armor. The discarded pieces sat next to their weapons as she curved up to press herself against him and kiss him on the lips for just a brief moment before they settled again, his arms tightly around her waist and her hands tracing the lines of sinews along his wrists, seated on the hard ground.

She wondered if normal humans felt this way sometimes, all shivery and comfortable.

She said the thing that had been going over and over in her head."I thought you were dead."

He said, "I know."

Her hand went to the two pairs of dogtags at her neck, wrapped around one set without looking to see which one it was. The gesture had become second nature after the Solace. After Kat's death, Noble Team had all slept without sound and Six had curled around Jorge's tags in her hands. She felt the letters of her own name stamped into the metal beneath her fingertips now. Aislinn-312, the 'l' a deep-dug line.

Softly she said, "You'll be wanting this back," and turned over the tags until she found his and slipped her fingers up the chain to pull them over her head.

He curled his hand around hers for a moment, stopping her and nestling closer. "You took good care of me, Six."

She smiled, savoring the warmth of his hand on the back of hers and the cold of the tags on her palm. "I aim to please," she said, old words from before when she had been giving him looks he couldn't see, and her smile turned into something with more humor and more edge.

"That you do." He laughed softly and settled his cheek against hers, surrounding her. She shifted and listened to his heartbeat, feeling hers strengthen. She did not know what else to say. Something behind her thoughts was stretching to the breaking point, fighting in little thrashes against the part of her that said she needed to keep thinking practical thoughts, about _tags_ and _rally points_ and _tactics_. About how not to get killed here in the ruins of her world, which was, when one really thought about it, _important_…

Jorge was fighting too, Six thought, if she could read the hitches in his breath well enough. Spartans just didn't learn how to know what to _ say _ when what they wanted to say was _I missed you so much that I could cry_.

Tactics won. Jorge released her fingers and carefully separated the two sets of tags. " We might need these if there's anybody left to find us."

"There might be." She nodded.

So he took the little strips of metal back and placed them around his neck, and she leaned back against him and lay her hands over his. "Jun's still out there," she said.

"So is Doctor Halsey."

"Both of them were sent to Castle Base. Maybe we can find them."

His sigh rumbled against her back. "So we keep moving toward it, until we find a ship, or capture a Covenant one."

She wondered what might be left with Sword Base gone, the ranks of Falcons gone from their berths, the best of the Spartans gone on the Pillar of Autumn. They would find someone, even with the comm channels fuzzy and limited from Covenant jammers.

They would wait.

Night fell, and with it a cold wind. Six's face started to get chilled, but she didn't want to move. Jorge kept his arms tightly around her, both of them clothed in the black gel under-layer of the MJOLNIR. It kept the body warm, but Six mourned, for what she was sure was not the last time, the loss of her helmet. It had been her face on Reach for….a little over a month.

Had it been such a short time since she met everyone in Noble Team? They were, now, everything important.

Six felt her eyes drifting shut and her mind fogging, falling into a blank, tired state. Deaths floated around in there somewhere, but they were softened by the fog.

One of Jorge's hands moved from beneath hers, and she peered through half-closed eyes. He brushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear and murmured something; she couldn't even tell what language it was in, but felt him breathe through the words.

She turned over to brace her arms against his chest and look at him. There was surprise, first, on his grizzled face, and then she didn't care about his expression as he leaned forward to kiss her and she became entirely concerned with-

A green laser blast splashed against the floor next to them.

Six flinched. Jorge sat up, his hands dropping from the service belt at her hips, and she scrabbled away from him to turn around, still sitting on the floor, and get a clear look at the mouth of the cave, scooping up her pistol on the way. Her breath was all out of control; two loud pulls at the air and then she was back to steady and normal, scanning the darkness.

The whole canyon face was moving. Little neon dots marked the lighted points of Covenant envirosuits and armor. She couldn't tell how many there were, but it was more than enough.

And they were coming in.

More plasma bolts careened through the cave. Six dashed to the side, leaving half of her armor in a pile in the middle of the cave. There was nowhere near enough time to work it on again. In the same predicament, Jorge stood framed in the cave entrance as he hefted the turret gun and set a flurry of blasts out into the night before retreating to the opposite wall.

Six wondered whether this group of Covenant had been sent by Relk, or only happened to find the cave where the Spartans had sheltered. She fired off a few pinging shots, felling Grunts and Jackals. Jorge was pressing forward, the alien numbers thinning. More were trotting down the canyon-

Something clattered behind her, and Six looked over her right shoulder. The pastel blue of a notched Jackal shield grew larger in the darkness at the back of the cave. She backed up slowly, pistol trained on the bulk of the invaders at the mouth of the cave. Jorge held the entrance like a wall, his face drawn back into crags shifted by battle cries. "Come on!"

Six took two steps backward and shot at the lone Jackal. The bullets jolted off the floor inches to its left, but Six had just wanted it to turn. The next shot hit it in the shoulder and spun it around. _How did it get back there?_

_There might be another entrance. _Her next shot killed it. The blue shield light went out, and the darkness it fell into beckoned for Six to explore.

She looked back toward Jorge's murky silhouette in the cave mouth. He shifted from foot to foot, then started to move back to retrieve his armor. Six returned to the front of the cave and stood over her own, covering the entrance of the cave with her pistol in held in both hands, one wrapped around the other. Plastics creaked. Jorge fit the heavy chest and shoulder pieces over his head and sealed the armor while Six turned her head to watch both sides of the cave. Jorge picked up his helmet, and she caught his eye for a moment to sign that she was going to scout out the back of the cave.

He held the helmet out. "Take it. You'll need the night vision."

She nodded, and pressed his hand tightly against the helmet's cheek before taking it. She would lead the expedition that she had planned, and the Spartan-II's enhanced vision would serve him better than hers.

While she was fitting the top layer of her armor on, the Covenant attacked again. Jorge backed into the cave, an active plasma grenade spitting blue sparks in one hand and the turret gun in the other. She put his helmet on, feeling the extra inches of space on either side of her face, and smelling a trace of sweat not scrubbed away by the filters. The night vision overlaid the world with clearly defined, three-dimensional , neon green.

She backed into the depths of the cave, Jorge following slowly and firing at the glint of Elite eyes.

The sounds of fire and the red dots on her HUD faded as Six moved farther into the cave. Loose rocks slid beneath her boots. The night vision showed a narrow tunnel ridged like a throat, switchbacking into the mountain. The tunnel sloped upward so slightly that she sometimes thought it was flat. After a time, Jorge propped the turret gun on one shoulder to make a narrower profile and trudged along behind her, silent.

It remained almost pitch dark, a green-edged entrapment, until the tunnel widened out. Six found regular, square-edged steps with the toe of her boot and ascended three of them before standing on solid ground again.

"This world…" Jorge muttered.

They were in an amphitheater. All signs indicated that it was not natural; arches had been built to hold up the stone ceiling, and a stone dais completed the room at the end of an aisle. Rows of seats-plastic, not stone-could have sat about one hundred people.

"What is this place?" Six said.

"A church, it might be…" Jorge said.

"Inside the mountain?"

"It's safe."

Six peered into corners and under seats, waiting for Covenant to rush from the angle she least expected even though her HUD was clear. There was something _wrong _about camping out in a church…and besides, they would need an avenue of escape. The Covvies knew about other entrances; they were too close.

She looked for the markings of what god was worshiped here; without any decoration besides the stone walls it could have been almost any religion that the humans of Reach would have brought with them from Earth, now trapped silent in the stone. A tattered, stone-colored curtain hung behind the dais. Six tipped her pistol in an unacknowledged salute to whoever built and bothered with this place.

Then they moved on. There was another tunnel which would have been exceedingly obvious had her gaze not been distracted by the high ceiling and the obvious purpose of the place. Two hundred feet down the next rocky corridor, Six started to hear the sounds of pattering rain.

The second cave mouth was not as wide as the first, and the Spartans came upon it quick. The rain had swept up fast and turned into something torrential, perhaps the result of Covenant ships stirring up cloud. In the night vision, rain splashing off the stone was the eerie green of Covenant blood. Thunder rumbled to itself above the dimly visible, jaggedly new mountains.

Six's attention was drawn back to the fact that she was wearing Jorge's helmet when she turned to track the sound of clattering rock, and it tipped slightly to one side. She resettled it with one hand while Jorge peered into the torrents of rain.

Three red dots cluttered the far side of her HUD. "Covvies at ten o'clock," Six said, and raised her pistol to track along the cave mouth.

_Keep us alive_, she prayed to the faceless gods of the amphitheater, and set about doing their work.


	11. Noble

_A/N: Hi! I'm back. It's been a hectic semester, but...here's more. And there's a surprise appearance in this chapter. Enjoy!_

XI.

More footsteps splashed through puddles outside, and flashes of purple and green were in no way mistakable for lightning. Six triangulated without thinking about it and sent off three pistol shots into the dark. Three thuds. Rock clattered and aliens screamed. Her hip and leg hurt like fire, and there was rain seeping along the edges of the biofoam and shocking the rest of her skin that had been so comfortable under her armor. She forced the other knee into action and dragged herself further out , propping herself on both elbows to ready the pistol again. Sharp eyes flicked side to side.

Reach had never been so dark when she knew it before. There had always been city glow somewhere. (There would be beautiful stars.)

Then Jorge was back and the assault rifle shattered out into the canyon. Jackals screamed and laughed. Six leaned over on her left shoulder and shot at a reflective eye halfway up the wall; the eye darkened and she rolled right as a plasma bolt splashed into a puddle three feet to her left. Jorge stepped almost into the spot it had landed and fired again, and finally the colors faded except for the occasional burst of lightning. Six stayed where she was, willing to protect the cave entrance with her body since she was stretched out there to begin with. She kept her hip twitched up off the ground, feeling the cold change to something older and goosefleshy. Silence for now but for the thunder up above. She turned and looked for more Covenant. Her gaze tended to dip down to where her HUD had showed the little red life signs, but that machinery was long left behind, and it irritated her with its absence.

Jorge approached and knelt down and leaned over her to brace one hand on the ground near her knees and sweep the cave entrance with the barrel of the gun and with his masked gaze. He said, with a quizzical edge, "They're moving away."

Judging by yesterday, the Covenant tended not to hunt at night. Like humans, they slept. Perhaps they thought they had the Spartans on the run and could take them at their leisure. (They did not and could not.) Perhaps, and Six gritted her teeth as if this were her birth-world, because it was her team's world and that was the same, they considered the humans no threat.

She clicked the safety on her pistol and shifted back to relax just a little bit, with Jorge still leaning over her. The only sound left was the rain. She waited for his all clear.

"All clear." And she sat up and fit into the space between his arms. He moved back into the cave and she followed best she could, and they sat down together on the dry, black ground with their guns at their sides. She looked down to tend to her wound and took a new biofoam canister from her belt and started replacing the material that had melted. She felt him move behind her, knew that he had nothing more to help her with. She got the bandage tightened until it almost didn't hurt.

Sitting there, she thought of dirt pluming off the ground in a Falcon crash. The ice waste after the Solace was almost forgotten.

She said, "I can take the first watch." Jorge nodded and Six carefully stood up, favoring her unhurt leg. He sat down next to the wall to sleep, and Six paced.

* * *

Five hours later Six woke up. Her internal clock and the watery light outside told her that t was the small hours of the morning. Jorge sat in the middle of the cave, his helmet back on and occasionally turning from side to side like a searchlight as he watched the path outside. Six had curled up beside him; she could feel his leg pressed against her back and his hand resting on the curve of her hip. The sun lit the murky walls of the cave.

She said, "Good morning."

He smiled down at her. "Hey."

She sat up; he patted her back as she did. "Has it been quiet?" she said.

"Like a grave."

Six felt sleepy and not quite real; the gulf of open air in the amphitheatre haunted her. It seemed like the right place to pay her respects to Reach and the god of its settlers, whoever that was. "I'm going to scout out that church," she said. "I can't sleep."

Jorge nodded.

"I won't be long. We can move out in an hour."

"Sure."

She stood up and brushed at the rock dust dulling the color of her armor.

* * *

Jorge gave her his helmet again, so the night vision lit up the empty cave paths in green, stark lines. The amphitheatre was unchanged. Six moved slowly down the aisle, leading with her pistol.

She ascended the three steps and looked back over the plastic seats, each one bolted to the ground at four corners.

There was a quiet scraping sound, like someone brushing against one of the seats. Six narrowed her eyes and glared into the passageways and corners. Nothing moved.

Six turned her back to the seats and approached the curtain. Brushing it aside revealed a perfectly flat, white surface without decoration. It felt meditative to run her fingers the curtain, but there was a prickly feeling in the back of her mind, telling her something was wrong. Spartan instinct, they called it, and trusted it. Six looked over her shoulder, Jorge's helmet catching on her armor plate. Her idle fingers found the smoothness of the surface behind the curtain. It was a bright, unnatural white, and flimsy when she turned her attention back and pressed on it. It looked like a movie screen. She turned around to search high on the back wall and found the shiny black lens of the projector.

Static crackled in her helmet, and Six lifted her pistol in both hands, sighting down the aisle. She slowly moved back down the stairs, crossing one foot over the other. She slowly moved the pistol sight from one entrance to the other.

A voice shouted over Noble's radio channel, and Six froze. "Come in, Noble Five. This is Noble Three." The accent pinched vowels and rolled the Ls. She knew this voice. It could give even rote calls the connotation that the speaker was facing a grim situation with resolute, cynical detachment.

Jun.

"Noble Three, this is Noble Six." Although she didn't want to say it, her voice fought though the request for proper security codes.

He gave them. She felt sadness dethatch itself from her like an ice shelf cracking and melting off the shore. She made the sign of the Spartan smile, swiping a comma across Jorge's faceplate.

Jun's yellow tag popped into view on her HUD unexpectedly, placing him in the arm of the cave she had travelled through yesterday. He said, "It's really you. They took holograms from Emile's body, Six."

So he might have seen Emile, alive and running, and been lured wherever the Covenant wanted him—

She said, "It's me, Jun. Aislinn."

He sighed through the uneven interference over the comm. A few seconds later, the glint of green armor appeared through the right hand passageway.

Jun was covered in faintly glowing alien blood. Six rushed toward him, forgetting for a moment about the movie theatre she had thought was a church; she caught Jun's forearm in one hand and helped him stand.

"I'm not dead yet," he said, and returned the Spartan smile across her faceplate. Still with that resigned sadness, he said, "You look like Jorge, Aislinn."

Another ice shelf of loss seemed to slough away. " He's here too, Jun."

The sniper stood up, away from her. There was disbelief in his voice. "How long have you been down here, Six?" He reached out for the helmet, and she let him examine it.

She said, "It is true, come on. I'll show you."

"Okay." Hesitantly and with hard eyes he followed her. She caught him looking up at the top of the room's large curtain.

"It's a movie theatre," she said. "Not a church."

"You thought it was a church?"

"Yeah."

He laughed brusquely and clutched Jorge's helmet tighter, holding his own next to it like a security blanket. Six knew that Jorge would be waiting for them at the mouth of the cave, not knowing how joyful a sight he was about to see. Even though he didn't have a comm she could check, he would be there. She hurried up, energized by the lightness of her heart, and behind her Jun started to run, with long, smooth Spartan strides. When she saw the light from the cave mouth she stopped and whistled to let Jorge know she was coming, and bringing a friendly with her. Ollyollyoxenfree... All clear.

* * *

Relk had been sitting for days. He felt cramped and over-tired and, mostly, ashamed of himself. Every once in a while the thought passed through his head that at least it was safe in the cell. No one had shot at him in days.

So when the doors opened and Kas'Orogai came in with one attendant Sangheili who Relk did not recognize, he was afraid that the shooting quota was about to go back up.

The stranger prowled around the cell, lips curling as if he smelled something rank (which he very well might). Relk stood, and he just kept prowling. Kas stood at the door, almost filling the frame with his bulky armor.

After his sweep of the cell, the guard returned to the door and stood beside Kas, who looked straight at Relk.

"The demon you kept as a pet for some time has not yet been found by our ground troops," Kas said.

Relk did not correct him as to who had been keeping whom in that situation. He also refrained from mentioning that there was no way in which the fact that the Spartan and company had escaped again, since he had been cooped up here.

He said, "Is that so, sir."

Kas glared. "The Prophet wished me to pass his holy word onto you. A team of Unggoy has been watching the demons until they disappeared into a cave system west of here. They are waiting for reinforcements to progress into the cave will lead them there."

Relk nodded, nervous and waiting. This was good, he supposed; to be able to lead a battle group again was a chance at revenge (and a chance to stretch his legs). The Prophet wouldn't let him go out with such an honor, though. There was punishment here somewhere, and Kas looked like he was about to mention it.

Kas tossed a five-pointed holo generator onto the floor. Golden-tinted images blossomed until Relk could clearly see six Unggoy circling a tall demon in a green armor shell. It wasn't the one Relk had travelled with, and it wasn't the orange-armored one who had helped him escape.

This one crouched, firing a pistol in a circle and felling three soldiers. A crowd of Unggoy swarmed him, and a stoic Sangheili visage appeared at the edge of the holographic field, pacing the dividing line between the holographic battle and the dirty floor of Relk's cell.

The demon threw one Unggoy over his shoulder into the path of two others and cracked another's air tank open with the back of his fist. Relk winced.

The holographic Sangheili, his white armor speckled with the blood of his troops, stepped forward and raised a sword high to crack the demon's skull-

The demon switched the gun for a knife couched at his shoulder, so fast that his hand was almost a blur until he nearly climbed the Sangheili, like an insect swarming out of a hive, and buried the knife in his neck. The Sangheili fell, twitching. Relk resisted the urge to turn away. The demon, ignoring the still-glowing sword and the blood sheeting over him, turned and walked away. The remaining Unggoy scattered, chattering with a shrill lack of dignity that Relk knew neither Kas nor any of the officers would approve of. The demon took a gun in hand again and turned it to cover the ground in front of him as he walked out of the holo's field of view.

Kas said, "This was one hour ago, and was sent to us on a narrow band by a particularly coherent Unggoy. This means that there are three demons out there now, when we thought that this world had been scoured of them. You have been chosen to lead a new forward team of Unggoy into the cave system. I will follow with additional troops, and perhaps our human problem can be solved."

Relk narrowed his eyes. Only Unggoy? They would be wiped out. They would be a distraction from Kas's team. Against three Spartans, two of which were probably going to go after Relk personally...This was his punishment.

"I think I'm all right with staying here," said Relk.

Kas gestured for his companion to come forward, and Relk flinched. Instead of hitting him, the guard actually moved back into the hallway for a moment and picked something up. When he returned into the cell, Relk saw that he was holding a demon's helmet, the faceplate cracked in two down the thick glass center. It was a familiar orange and gold.

Kas took the helmet in both hands. "We found this at the crash site." He turned it over so that Relk could see the black, padded interior. Some lights dotted the faceplate. Wires had been sewn in secondhand; Relk guessed they had been installed in the workshop at the Covenant base. Whoever had done them, they had worked well to re-energize the human technology. The interior of the visor showed a red warning meter blinking endlessly at the top edge, and a small, round map in the corner, showing three red dots.

"This will lead you to the demons," Kas said. "The site of the attack you just watched should be close enough for the other humans so show up on their own radar. It should be easy to find them."

And for them to find me! Relk didn't take the helmet. "This cell is quite unpleasant enough to be worth my crimes-"

Kas reached out and clamped an armored hand around Relk's shoulder. "Serve your people," he said.

Relk, quietly protesting between the other two, was hustled out of the cell.


	12. Old Friends

_A/N: Thanks to **LadyLaconia **for the beta. I'm trying to make the chapters longer and give this story its due instead of rushing things. Also, I'm pretty sure this story is going to end up in "Ghosts of Onyx" territory. Because I want to write about Kurt. _

XII.

Aislinn couldn't stop smiling. She kept looking sidelong at Jun, making sure he was still there. Three of them being back together meant that half of Noble Team was alive. It was like she had gotten her family back. She felt energized and fully awake, and started to run as she neared the mouth of the cave. Jun followed, but talked like he wanted to slow down and take his time.

"How did Jorge make it back?" he asked.

"He told me all about it. The ship went into slipspace. He met an Elite and captured a ship."

"An Elite?"

"Yeah. Good old Relk. We met a few days ago."

"You and Jorge, or you and the Elite?"

"Both." Six paused, and slowed her jogging to let Jun catch up. She said, "Where have _you_ been?"

"With Doctor Halsey."

Talking about this was delayed only by the appearance of Jorge at the point where the cave widened out. He tilted his head quizzically at the appearance of the second Spartan. Six's smile widened when Jorge spoke.

"Jun?"

The sniper dashed forward and nearly fell into an enthusiastic shake of Jorge's hand. Jorge shamelessly pulled him into a hug. His first response was something in Hungarian, emotion thick on the words. Then, "Where have you been?"

Six drew closer. She knew he was thinking about Halsey.

Jun sighed. "I'm so glad you're back. I've been in Castle Base. It's a fortress, completely impenetrable . The Covvies don't know our entrance is there. We saw your helmet signal out of nowhere. I should be asking where _you've_ been!"

"Out in space." Jorge moved back closer to the center of the cave and sat down. The others followed, Jun sitting so close that their knees nearly touched. All of them were linked by the MJOLNIR and by a shared, shocked _We're not dead. _They were Spartans, and remained prepared, hands twitchy at triggers. But Jun and Six took their helmets off and settled down. Occasionally someone would touch someone else's shoulder, or knees; it didn't matter who, and it didn't matter when. Noble Team was like this. Although Aislinn hadn't known the threes of Beta Team to be so, she also had not stayed with them long enough before her assigned exile. Spartans were brusque and serious and goal-oriented; Noble Team was also casually, calmly close. She remembered Jorge's hand on her shoulder before she met Halsey for the first time, or Carter's after she lost Jorge, or the way she had touched Kat's knee as yet another explosion burst the sky apart.

Now again all three of them wanted reassurance that yes, this was real, all was not lost_- _

Jorge began to tell the story of how he had survived, outlining for Jun the way the Solace had stayed intact and he had taken a tour through Covenant space. He finished with a description of Relk. "A cowardly little one. He's still out there somewhere."

Jun said, "Not only am I impressed, but...we were so sure no one could survive that."

Jorge said, "Looks like somebody still wanted me around."

Six couldn't resist interjecting. "At least, I did." She took his hand, and he grasped hers tightly back. Jun zeroed in on the grip they held, but he made no comment. Hand-holding was _not _normal Noble Team behavior, but neither Jun nor Six knew what to say about it at the moment, or thought it was more important than surviving.

Jorge said, "I found her just in time. Fighting alone."

Jun remained businesslike. Fighting alone was no great feat. "What about the others?"

Six shook her head. "Emile died for me. I saw the body. Carter too; he...didn't make it." She was going to say more but profoundly _did not want to_; survivor's guilt was poking at her. Maybe Jun felt it too, the deaths somehow more acute now that there were less of them. They had eyes now.

Six said, "So Castle Base is still intact?"

Jun said, "The Covenant tried to get in, but Castle Base is strong. I snuck out and fought my way to your signal. Stole a Scorpion for a while...that was fun. But I needed to get into the caves. That's where I found Six." He gestured toward her.

"In the movie theatre," she confided. "The church. It's actually a theatre."

Jorge said, "Huh." He looked at Jun. "You were with Halsey?"

"Yes," Jun replied. "She's there in the base, trying to ride out the invasion and keep her research safe."

Jorge said, "Then we go to her."

"Now?" Jun said.

"Yeah. Were you followed?" Jorge stood up.

"At a distance." Jun stood as well, and Six followed. "I fought off a group not long ago."

"There's three of us now," Jorge said. "We can make it."

Jun said, "It's an infested world out there." He picked his helmet off the ground and moved to the back of the cave, peering into the darkness with the curled fist of tattoo pulling down around his eyes.

"We can make it," Six repeated. "We've come this far. There might be other Spartans out there. Right?" Maybe her optimism was from the augmentations, maybe it was tube-fed chemical concoctions in her brain cells. But it felt alright. It resisted Jun's grim expression.

The sniper said, "That's right."

Jorge said, "We can leave right now." He went to scoop up his weaponry, and Six followed him into the corner opposite Jun.

She said, "So Halsey and Jun are both alive. That's great."

Jorge smiled. "It is. Halsey...I just want to see her. " Six's expression hardened. She didn't particularly like the doctor, but Halsey was Jorge's mentor, and most importantly for right now, she was human. She could give them a safe place. There were no grudges left.

Jorge asked her, "How's your leg?"

Sis shifted her wounded side, raising her cloven-armored heel. It pained in sharp webs. "Stiff. But I can walk fine." This was true. She just didn't want to know what the wound looked like underneath the dressing.

"Okay." He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

She said, "It's okay. Nobody's leaving again. Not for a while."

He started to say something, but it was not the time now; Jun was almost jogging across the floor, his helmet replaced on his head.

"What is it?" Six said, but the moment when Jorge had known he was going to die was replaying in her head. _They need you down there_. He had thought her life worth more than his.

Jun said, "Check your HUD. We've got company."

Jorge retrieved his helmet and Six looked up at him, waiting for her turn at the signal. He said, "It's one of ours."

Six felt her stomach lurch. "Who?"

Jun said, "Check it out. The transponder signal..."

Jorge muttered from inside his own helmet. "B312."

The lurch that might have been hope instantly turned into fear. Six understood the situation immediately, remembering when she had fought the whole gang of Elites on the open plain and discarded her cracked mask. "They've got my helmet."

"Here." Jorge handed his over. When Six put it on she was for a moment again surrounded by the darkness and the smells of mingled sweat. Then she got used to the change and focused on the lights in the little lefthand field, a red cloud with her own yellow signal in the middle, as if she had been captured and taken away from herself and into the enemy. She felt a sudden sense of loss for her helmet, the face she had been given.

She gave Jorge his mask back and pulled the nearly-empty pistol from her magnetized back plate. "There's a fight on its way. They'll know where we are unless we disable our own transponder signals."

Jorge replaced his helmet and looked around, firming the seals. "We should move out toward Castle Base."

"Tagging the helmet with a foe marker now," Jun said. "Sorry, Six."

"No," she said. "Leave it. I'm going to get it back if I have half a chance."

"And if you confuse it for an _actual _friendly?"

"I won't."

Jun shrugged. "Have it your way. We're gonna need more than half a chance to get where we're going anyway."

* * *

The three Spartans moved out of the cave system, crouched and quiet. Bringing up the rear with his sniper rifle, Jun watched Six glance back at the cavern entrance. A last prayer to the gods of the movie theatre, maybe, or to the invisible audience in the seats, watching the Spartans' death march.

If anybody was watching now, they were doing a fine job of staying away instead of helping out.

Jun had never been optimistic. You couldn't be a pessimistic Spartan, really; pessimism implied too much attention paid to possibilities. Like the others, he paid the most attention to the world around him. But he never quite had the urge to test the impossible that the others had. At least, not after Thom had died. He didn't know why that death had stayed with him so long, but it had. It overshadowed the entire team until they faded into it.

The hillsides around the remnants of Noble Team were empty and brown, but red dots lead by one yellow one were swarming at the lower left side of his HUD, and getting closer.

Jorge said, "Did you hear that?"

They all moved to the sides of the gully, weapons ready. The cave was so far behind them as to be a small, black dot to Spartan senses. Ahead, the path flattened out to the plains and what had been a trucking depot. Fences were broken and asphalt cratered, some tanker trucks lying abandoned on their rounded sides with the marks of war all around them. The pavement was new and dark.

Then Jun heard what Jorge had heard. A crackle over his headset, maybe a garbled voice.

Jorge said, "Someone's on the comm!"

Jun heard the whispery voice again, but now he noticed that it was coming from the speaker next to his ear-not the external timpanums or the voices in his head. It repeated, and he heard among the crackle the words "Castle Base."

He said, "It's Halsey."

A stick snapped on the hillside. A second later, a sticky grenade arced over their heads and the Spartans scattered. The grenade burned blue in the middle of the path, and Jun saw the red tide come in inside his mask. "Three to the right, four to the left," he yelled for Six's benefit, but there were more coming and his estimate was wrong in a minute-

He could see Six and Jorge on the other side of the gully, weapons pointed up at the crowd of Covenant cresting the hill. Jun spun and took out two on the high sides next to him, then sprinted toward the others. Their weapons were going to be spent _real _soon, so he needed to use what other resources he had.

"This way! This way!" He yelled and waved for the benefit of both Spartans and Covenant, and backed toward the depot.

A fuel truck lay on its side, far enough from the gully not to block the path. A thin trickle of black oil meandered out from under its rear tire. While Jorge and Six retreated, firing calculated bursts at the coming horde, Jun set his shoulder against the truck. It was heavier than a Warthog by at least three times, but maybe all of them together could tilt it up and get it rolling.

Six joined him first, her long legs taking the dark ground in hitching strides. "Forget that. Back up, back up!" She leveled her pistol at the truck. "One shot and it explodes. Get back."

Jorge was closest to the gully. He had stopped firing and just watched the mixed squad of Elites and Grunts come. Jun shouldered his rifle and sent two of the smaller aliens spinning on ruptured gas tanks. Six was right. Forget how dangerous it would be to drive; they could make the truck explode just like the Grunts.

He signaled quickly for Jorge to fall back. The Spartan-II hesitated, looking for a face in the crowd.

His voice came low over the comm. "There." A moment later one of the Elites near the back of the group was tagged with a blue arrow. Relk. The bobbing, ducking form held Six's orange helmet under its arm and cackled for the rest of his troops to move ahead of them. Some did. Some hackled and refused.

The three Spartans formed a rough triangle two feet away from one another and backed up, weapons trained on the horde and the truck it was approaching.

Jun raised his hand with three fingers held up, and lowered them one at a time.

_Three. Two. One._

He fired. Six's pistol and Jorge's turret gun were high and low counterpoint to the zipping sing of the sniper. Bullets made neat little holes in the rusty gray side of the gas tanker, and gas spilled out in a black murk more sluggish than water.

No explosion.

Jorge cursed and reloaded. Six tucked her lower lip under her top teeth and looked hard at the horde as if they were a mathematical equation she needed to solve. Jun could almost hear her thinking- _almost_, but not quite over the pounding beat of his disappointment.

And then Six shot one final burst. A Grunt near the truck's front tire screamed and tipped over. Another one next to it tripped over its flailing arms. The sparking grenade it had been holding rolled under the truck.

Jun turned and ran.

The grande exploded and took the tanker with it. A bubbling mass of orange-yellow fire reflected in Jun's helmet as he ran. Rocks pattered along the asphalt. He couldn't feel the heat through his armor, but his shield took a hit and dialed down to half a bar. He skidded behind the wall of a building and Six dashed past him, her armored arms held over her head and strings of blood tangled in her hair. She stopped a few feet away, breathing normally but brushing her hair out of her eyes. Jorge appeared around the corner a second later, his heavier armor unscathed.

Jun saw a few red dots lingering on his HUD and thought he knew what Jorge had been looking for. "Relk?"

"I dunno."

Then something roared over their heads. Jun looked up to see the flat gray of a Falcon's underbelly. It seemed impossible for an undamaged UNSC craft to be plying the atmosphere, but there it was.

And there was the voice over the comm again, clear with its proximity. "You certainly know how to make yourselves known, Spartans. Welcome back to Reach."

It was Halsey.


	13. The Depot

XIII.

Jorge released a held breath of relief. That was Halsey's voice in his ear, as calm and unscathed as she ever was. He wouldn't be surprised if she was flying the Falcon herself.

That didn't mean this area was safe, or that she was wise in leaving Castle Base.

The Falcon flew overhead with a deep, Dopplering roar. Chunks of glowing metal dropped out of the sky from the exploded truck. The three Spartans remained hidden behind the largest wall of the depot, while the Falcon circled around the remaining Covenant troops. They milled around but did not yet regroup.

Jorge said, "Good work, Six. Now let's give Halsey a place to land."

Six said, "On it," and raised her pistol. Her shields had flared blue after the explosion, but aside from a few scratches on her face, she seemed to be holding up without her helmet.

The Falcon circled. Halsey's voice came over the comm more clearly now. "Clear me a LZ and I'll pick you up."

Jorge said, "Yes ma'am. Good to see you again."

He thought that the pause before she spoke had contained amazement at seeing him alive, like maybe she wanted to say more but didn't have time. She often kept things back, but emptinesses that might otherwise have been filled with breath gave her away. War took the time words required, and filled it. But there would be more time later. They could get to Sword Base or another fortification. They could kill these Covenant-

Relk was still up on the hillside, identifiable by his shiny, colored armor and by the blue marker tagging Six's helmet.

As soon as the flak stopped falling, the aliens moved toward the hidden Spartans again.

Six moved to shout in Jorge's direction. "Ask Halsey if she can provide cover." She gestured toward the hilltop as if ordering an air strike.

Jorge nodded and relayed the message.

Halsey said, "I'll do what I can." A moment later, little golden darts of gunfire flashed down into the Covenant ranks, and the aliens charged forward toward the cover of the depot.

Jorge said, "Jun, why don't you get up into the rafters around here and do what you're best at? Six, you good to come with me?"

"Yes," she replied. "I've just gotta find a better weapon."

Jun took to a ladder without a comment, climbing fast and propping up his sniper rifle on a railing above them as Jorge and Six prepared to enter the open ground again from two separate points. Halsey strafed again and a few Grunts waving grenades danced into the blackened ground near the skeleton of the fuel truck.

Jorge said, "Leave Relk to me."

Six said, "And my helmet to me."

Jun's first shots speared two Grunts through their air tanks, leaving the grenades burning on the ground. The sniper said, "I guess those are for me then."

It was easy being back on a team. Jorge still felt the losses of Carter, Kat, and Emile acutely, but as he waded into the fight with Six and Jun at his back, he thought that it was so right to be on the dirt and in a group again. If Halsey was here, she would know how to get them out of danger for a while. She would, at least, know something.

Quick thoughts, one after another like tracer rounds, and then four Jackals jumped down from the high ground. Jorge shot them. No elegance, no song in the gunfire for Spartan instincts to dance to, just the flat whirr and rattle of bullets. He got two Jackals with the turret gun. Jun fired again and two Skirmishers rocked backwards with black blood like feathers pluming from the back of their heads. Six got close enough to the Skirmisher that she ducked under its slapping arm and shot out the pale skin of its neck. She scooped up its energy pistol and sealed her own gun to her back. More shots picked the aliens off from inside the depot.

Relk moved down behind the remains of the truck. Jorge saw a glimpse of orange helmet under his arm.

Six took off after him. Jorge exchanged fire with another Jackal and hit it at least three times. A shadow passed overhead as Jun jumped from one abandoned oil tank to another.

The ranks of Elites had thinned out, leaving Relk clearly visible. Six had flushed him out. She moved forward slowly, crouched toward the ground while the Elite stood halfway down the hill, shoulders hunched in what looked like nervousness. The ground around him was open and clear of surface fuel lines. A pair of Grunts scattered like rats.

Jorge aimed his machine gun up toward Relk. "Now's your chance, Covvie."

Bargaining with aliens wasn't in his mission parameters, but Jorge and Relk had held each other hostage enough times that he didn't really think it mattered any more. Jorge said, "Give us the helmet and the transponder, and I just might not kill you."

Jorge's prediction that Relk's cowardice would make this plan work held true. The Elite moved toward him slowly, his plasma rifle held loosely in one hand, pointed toward the ground, and Six's helmet under the other. Je approached to six feet.

The signature sound of the Falcon blasted Jorge's senses. Maybe someone said, "Wait," under the roar, but he wasn't sure. Gunfire perforated the ground. The Falcon veered upward, leaving Jorge engulfed in dust and exhaust. He couldn't see Relk in front of him, although a green, murky glow marked what might have been the mouth of the plasma pistol shining through the fog.

Jun's voice cut through the comm. "Wait. That one's Jorge's old friend."

Halsey sounded confused even through the static. "Repeat that, Spartan."

Jorge said, "Doctor Halsey, pick the others up at the top of the tower. I'll be able to join you in two minutes."

As the fog cleared, Jorge saw Halsey following the orders he had so quickly given. The Falcon nudged up against the refueling tower and Jun stalked toward its back ramp. Six started to scale the tower.

In the dissipating smoke, Jorge saw Relk turn and run away.

The Spartan-III was faster than he looked. In three long, armor-assisted steps, he caught up. He hooked his foot around Relk's ankle, sending the Elite to the ground at the same time as Jorge slammed his forearm under Relk's chin. Six's helmet thudded to the ground and rolled. Relk looked up, his face transforming from dinosaurian to completely alien as his four jaws split apart.

Jorge hit him until Relk's eyes closed, picked up Six's helmet in one hand and the Elite neck armor in the other, and walked to the Falcon.

Halsey had set down on the outskirts of the depot. She started to lift off again as soon as Jorge's feet hit the deck.

Jorge could clearly picture Jun's eyebrows raising toward his neatly shaven skull as the sniper watched Jorge drag Relk into the ship by the back of his neck. The Elite was dumped in a heap on the floor.

Jun said, "Why're we bringing that?"

"Better than leaving him to tell the others we've got air support."

"Or you could kill him..."

Jorge looked at Six. She sat with both hands on her left leg, squeezing the seals she had opened to check on the wound she had gotten from the energy sword. "You okay?" Jorge said.

"Just fine," Six said. "I always got high marks in climbing."

"Can we go back to the bit about the Elite?" Jun said.

Jorge handed Six her helmet, which she accepted.

Halsey looked back at the Spartans. She wore a white parka drawn tightly at her chin, and it looked like her face had gained worry lines since Jorge had seen her last. She said, "Please do explain our newest passenger." A lump formed in her throat and was swallowed down. "You don't know how good it is to see both of you alive. We just need to make sure we stay that way."

"Yes ma'am," the Spartans chorused.

Halsey returned her attention to their flight path as two green bolts of plasma shot past the hatch. Two Grunts on the ground were trying to finish the fight.

Of course, Relk chose that moment to wake up.

His first thrash hit the back of Jorge's leg. That didn't affect the Spartan's balance in the slightest, but Relk's other hand wrapped around Jorge's ankle and pulled. Jorge felt the Falcon tip dangerously as Halsey avoided the gunfire from the ground. He watched as Jun slammed the butt of his rifle against Relk's neck and shoulders, but the Elite armor did its job. Jorge stamped down, aiming to crush Relk's hand, but the decking tipped again and he felt himself lose his balance. The weight of the gun at his back became another enemy. He reeled as Relk rose to his feet, and Jun lunged in response.

Jorge saw blue Reach sky swing past him as Relk pushed him again. Six lurched forward in the cramped space. Two of her hands grabbed one of his as his feet slipped off the decking. She craned her neck and lashed backwards with her whole body to pull him up. Sunlight gleamed off the cracked, orange surface of her helmet, spinning like the horizon line as the Falcon turned. She heaved Jorge back onto the deck, letting out one huff of breath as they both stood steady. He felt her start shaking through her gauntlet, but her grip stayed strong.

Jun and Relk came to grips on the other side of the hold. The sniper pulled his combat knife and pushed it up against Relk's neck. The Elite garbled something in his own language.

Halsey said, "Get that under control!"

Jorge asked, "Do you have translation software at your base?"

"Yes, but-"

"Don't kill him. He's a coward. Could be useful."

Jun tipped his head and didn't move the knife. "Coward?"

Slowly, Relk raised his hands.

Jun laughed. "I guess so!"

"He's got this thing about not dying," Jorge said.

Six said, "So we're keeping him to get information?"

"Or just because Jorge likes him." Jun laughed. Jorge shrugged. Relk had acted decently human to him. There had been enough death lately, and this didn't mean that he was going to offer tea and cakes to every Elite he saw. He just had a feeling that this one was meant for something different.

Jun slowly backed off from Relk. "So, you gonna sit down or what?" He pointed to the seat with the knife.

Relk slowly sank down, mouthparts clamped together.

Jorge took a seat beside Six, patting her hand as she kept a tight grip on her captured weapon.

Six glanced at Halsey. "Where are we headed?"

"I've taken control of an underground facility some distance from here. We should be safe there for some time; safer than we would be at Castle Base." Halsey did not look back at her. The sky was clear and blue now. Jorge saw the fuel depot sink away into the distance. He kept looking at Relk. The Elite had agreed so easily to just sit down. Admittedly, Jun now had his gun pointed at him. But what were they doing bring the Elite along anyway?

Jorge couldn't kill him. He had a feeling that Relk was important. But any idea he had - bargaining with the Covenant, using Relk as a double agent- just left a sour ache in his stomach, and didn't seem plausible. It wasn't like Relk was on the Spartans' side; he just had a sort of agreement with Jorge that meant they'd occasionally try to kill each other. These attempts not succeeding was key. But Relk was not a tame Covvie.

Jorge sighed and leaned back before craning his head to look out at the ground, which was now trawling by hundreds of feet below. It was good to see Halsey, but he couldn't come out and tell her that now. It just wasn't right, like it wasn't right to kill Relk.

Instead, he asked, "You learn to fly while we were gone, ma'am?"

She knew that he didn't mean any disrespect by it. Halsey was strong, and well-respected in the public and private portions of the UNSC, but she was certainly not certified to fly a Falcon. "I've got some help, Jorge."

She waved a hand, and a small, blue figure appeared floating above the console to Halsey's right. It was a female figure hardly larger than Jorge's palm, seemingly lounging in mid-air with one leg crossed over the other. The AI's serious expression belied its relaxed pose.

Halsey, said, "This is Kalmiya, one of the AI I work with here. She has assisted with what protocols I did not know. Now...I know them."

Jun shrugged. "I'm impressed. But this hideout you're talking about. What are we supposed to do from there? The planet is lost."

"No," said Six. Her emphatic denial begged further comment, but she didn't offer any except to look at Jun.

"What?" the sniper replied. He gestured outside. Smoke and orange dots of fiery residue marked the dingy ground. "You were out there."

"I know. But we can't...just let it go."

Relk shook his head and then nodded.

"There might be a chance." Halsey said. She kept looking out at the blue. "There are other Spartans on their way."

"What?" Jorge's reaction was identical to his teammate's.

Jun cocked his head. "Really? Who?"

Jorge's mind raced. Who else had been assigned to Reach? He had been out of touch with the Spartan-IIs for so long that he didn't know. From all reports, all of the twos besides those he was with had been downed in the last few hours.

Halsey said, "Some members of Red Team. They're on their own for now."

"Well let's get there," Jun said.

Jorge narrowed his eyes, wondering about all the things that had happened in the last few days. So many changes made thinking about them all at once feel like fog behind his eyes. He could easily shake that off, though. He was a Spartan, and they had an objective. Wait for their landing at Halsey's base, and rendezvous with all surviving troops there. It would be good to see Red Team.

Until then, the remnants of Noble had some surviving to do.


	14. Patching the Wounds

_A/N: Here's a long chapter. It's dialogue heavy, because I thought that what "First Strike" really needed was more moments in which characters could slow down and be people. I'm gonna try to keep this to book canon to some point for a while._

_Unfortunately, the talk in this chapter doesn't pass the Bechdel Test. Sadface._

* * *

_XIV_

The Falcon put down in what used to be a glade. One tree doggedly held on, the leaves on one side hanging in withered and wet-looking green. The rest of the trees were blackened trunks with piles of ash at their bases. A horde of red foe markers, so many that Six almost couldn't tell one dot from another, lurked at the top edge of her HUD. There was a Covenant army over there, waiting beyond the mountains.

When Halsey got out, Kalmiya's blue avatar disappeared from on top of the console. Six and Jorge moved to walk together as Halsey lead them up a hill. Judging by the stumps, it had once been more heavily forested than the flat ground, but the attack that had killed the trees had hit the exposed ground harder. What might have once been a hidden door, protected from visual scanning by foliage and brush, was now exposed.

Relk walked with Jun behind him, the Spartan's rifle pointed at his back. It made the skin on Six's shoulders prickle to think of how vulnerable the humans were to the Elite. She wanted to know why Jorge was so attached to him - and hoped it was a sound reason. Spartans were usually told to trust their instincts- and to follow their orders- on matters such as how to choose their allies and whether to kill or capture their opponents.

Halsey pressed her palm against an ash-scuffed pad next to the door. The second security measure was a whispered phrase: "Advent Olly."

The third was Kalmiya. Already inside, her voice seemed to come from everywhere in the gray metal corridor the door opened onto. "Welcome back, doctor."

"Kalmiya," Halsey said. "Drop the internal FOF until I inform you otherwise." She turned around as the Spartans entered the cool hall. "We don't want Jorge's friend setting anything off."

Jorge said, "If you'd rather we leave him..."

"No." She cut him off. "I think a pinioned Elite is exactly what we need." She looked at Relk with a fearlessness that Six didn't understand in a woman without a gun. Maybe Halsey had never felt the iron-bar strength of an Elite come down on her throat. "You'll tell us what the Covenant are going to do next, and maybe even what they're saying. Jorge, did you communicate with him while you were mission in action?"

"Only names, ma'am," Jorge replied. "Mine and his, and Reach."

"And what is his name?"

"Relk."

"Hmm." Halsey gave no further reply.

Six looked around as they turned a few identical corners. She had never seen this base before, but a Spartan was no different from any other soldier in that they got the information a mission required, and assumed that the higher-ups knew what they were doing with the rest.

Jorge didn't seem content with that, though. "So, what is this place?"

Jun replied, "A death trap."

Six raised her eyebrows. Before she could speak, Halsey clarified. "This corridor is designed to keep people out. Kalmiya and dumb sensors keep track of whoever goes in or out. We'll get to the main station, where Jun and I have been preparing in case of having to leave Castle Base, in a moment. Ah."

They had come to another door. Halsey opened it the same way she had the other one, with a different passcode. This one was "Advent Orion."

Six said, "I thought we were staying at Castle Base."

Halsey's reply was short and simple. "This is better."

The deathtrap hallways lead into a small but complete medical station, with four sitting rooms branching off from it. Six desperately hoped that there was a shower somewhere.

Jun pointed with his elbow at Relk. "What do we do with this one?"

Halsey turned around in the doorway of the medical suite. She had flicked the light on, and it shone yellow around her as she raised a hand to adjust her glasses. "Let him go free."

"Ma'am?" Jun sounded surprised. Six wondered how well he had gotten to know Halsey after he had separated from the rest of Noble Team to go with her.

"If he is going to help us, he needs some measure of confidence. Don't take your eyes off him, but...let him walk around. Let him smell the processed air."

Jun nodded at Relk. Six and Jorge watched as the sniper lowered his gun, and Relk looked around like an animal that had been let out of its cage.

Then the Elite slowly started walking. He stomped to the entrance to one of the smaller rooms and looked inside. Jun started to follow him, but Relk came out a moment later, carrying a chair.

He set it down near the wall and sat in it, looking around at them from under the thick ridge of his open-faced helmet.

Jun laughed. It started as a snicker behind his mask, but then the sniper actually put his head in his hands and laughed until his shoulders shook as Six and Jorge started laughing too. Once she started, Six couldn't stop looking at the gangly Elite posed in the too-small chair, looking like a dog that had been told to sit.

Jorge said, "See, they're a little bit civilized where he comes from."

Six was about to contest that when Halsey called her name.

"Noble Six." The doctor lead her into the medical suite while Six tried to figure out what her almost inflectionless tone of voice meant. Sometimes it sounded like Halsey was purring through the Spartans' names, clipping off the last syllables with tiger teeth. It was like Halsey felt affronted because the threes had dared to raise and name themselves without her mothering. Because they weren't hers, Halsey didn't respect them.

Or maybe Halsey just wasn't a 'respecting people' type of person.

The medical suite contained an operating bed and walls studded with controls and computer screens. Halsey pushed a button and the door slid closed, leaving them behind windows that Six now saw were actually two-way mirrors. Her own helmeted reflection stared, dark and quizzical, back at her. She kept the mask on; it was spidered with cracks but functional, and it was nice to know that the two green dots and one red dot on her HUD were staying in their places just outside the door. She wondered whether this medical suite had ever doubled as an interrogation room.

Halsey turned away from the screens to look at Six. "You were limping. We need to fix that."

Six swung her legs onto the bed and lay down. The pallet had been made for unaugmented humans, which meant that although the edge of the bed couldn't hurt her ankles through the armor, her feet hung uncomfortably over the edge. Halsey might have bothered her personally, but the doctor could do essential work to get Six back up to speed. "It was a beam sword," Six explained. "I've treated it with biofoam."

Halsey bent to remove the left thigh plate from Six's armor. Six noticed that it took her a few tries to find the release tabs and pull the plate into its upper and lower parts. Maybe the Spartan-II armor was different. Jorge would know.

Six reluctantly looked at the wound. A deep scoop of muscle had been lifted out of her leg, just missing the bone. Luckily, it was far from the thick veins that ran along the other side. She had filled the wound with the antibiotic biofoam quickly enough for healthy, pink, gene-treated skin to already be coming in around the edges. Six saw nasty red striations when Halsey brushed the biofoam away from the deep middle of the cut.

"I'll need to stitch this," Halsey said. "It's not ideal, but it's what I can do here. The stitches will dissolve naturally when the skin starts to heal."

Six turned her head away as Halsey got out a needle and a small packet.

The doctor said, "There's still a large rip in the bottom layer of your suit. We can't fix that here, or the upper plate either."

"I can patch the mesh layer with another section."

"I would recommend that. Try not to end up under water or in space for a few days, would you?" There was that edge to her voice again that Six neither liked nor understood. A picking, tugging pain indicated that she had started to work.

To try to distract herself, Six replied in a way that she thought might equally throw Halsey off, and maybe lighten her up. "But space went so well for us last time."

Halsey said, "Both you and Jorge are...lucky to have survived. It went as well as could be expected, with the appearance of the fleet."

Six ground her teeth, but she wrenched her voice back from the pain as Halsey kept stitching. She recognized that she was talking just to distract herself, but it was a legitimate question anyway. "You two seem close. Did you train him specially?"

Halsey said, "Until I met Noble Team, I hadn't seen him since he finished the training he needed to become a heavy weapons specialist. That was...over ten years ago. But I know all the Spartans...or so I thought." Her formal way of speaking seemed slightly less annoying because of how unconscious it was.

Six leaned her cheek into the cool, padded interior of her mask. She wondered what Jorge had been like ten years ago, before he modified his armor, and before Noble Team had been founded. He'd have worn the blocky MJOLNIR that Six had only seen in person maybe once in her life. Kurt Ambrose had rarely worn his, preferring to adopt the camouflage armor common to the threes during their training. That deference seemed to mark the twos-but surely they weren't all so kind. She'd heard only rumors of John-117, the other Spartan who'd eared the rating of hyper-lethal.

Six asked, "Are the twos all that different from us?"

Another pinching pull, stronger than the rest, startled Six. She clamped down hard on her urge to move.

Halsey said, "I haven't done the necessary tests to answer that question. You can sit up."

Six did. Her leg felt sorer than it had in days. The stitches were ugly, bristly, and bright blue. She felt the bristles bend against her newly-grown skin as she fit the top layer of her armor back on.

Halsey said, "I read that less was done to your generations. Did you have chemical injections instead of surgeries?"

"For the most part, ma'am." This was pretty comfortable to talk about. It was just diagnostics, although she wasn't sure what level of clearance Halsey had.

The doctor didn't dwell on specifics she could get from Noble Team's files. "I've noticed that you're more individualistic than my Spartans. It's easier to tell what you feel, even because of the ways you modify your armor."

Six cocked her head. "And do you think that's a bad thing?"

Halsey stared right into her eyes, aiming infallibly through the mask. "You feel slowly, Spartan, and we live in a fast world. You hold on to emotions. Jun does too; I don't know enough to say about your whole team."

"I don't think I do either." She had been with Noble Team as a whole for twenty-two days and remembered all of them. She had been so busy getting to know the team as people that maybe she had misread them as Spartans.

Halsey said, "It's possible that working with Jorge changed them to some extent, made them more understanding of others."

"Or it could have been Thom." She had only heard stories of the first Noble Six, who had sacrificed himself for the others.

"Who?"

"The one I replaced."

Halsey paused in thought, and then said, "You're right. I don't know much about that."

Six wasn't sure how to react to that, so she asked a different question instead. "Who's Red Team?"

"You certainly do talk a lot."

Six refrained from snapping. "I like to learn, ma'am."

"That's one thing I have discovered about Noble Team. You're so very curious. You are dismissed, lieutenant. Ask Jun and the Elite in." Pause. She said, softer, "I can't believe I'm saying that."

Six figured that it wouldn't hurt to retain her 'curious' label and ask the money question. "Who's Red Team, ma'am?"

Halsey stared at her again, face unreadable. "Kelly-087, Fred-104, John...although he is currently otherwise occupied...and some others. The original team was the three of them, but I did manage to get a signal out to other Spartans before Jun insisted we rescue you. Or rather, insisted that we rescue Jorge...but Jun did get to know me a bit. He knew where my weak points were. A lager version of Red Team, almost thirty Spartans in all, were deployed to aid the evacuation of Reach after the...apparent failure of Noble Team. They were also intended to find Covenant ruins detected under these very mountains. The remnants of Noble will be joining them."

Six nodded. Reinforcements were good. The fact that she'd never worked with more than one Spartan-II before was a concern, but not one that effected her morale. It shouldn't bother her. At least they weren't ODSTs.

She swing her legs off the table. The stitches pulled, but she knew that the wound would start healing now. It was only because the sword had sliced so deeply that it had been trouble at all. Spartan blood was made with the urge to seal off wounds quickly; Spartan muscles wanted to reknit.

The green-black walls were starting to feel stifling. Six beelined for the door, feeling the air run cool over the bared skin of her leg. In the next free time she got she would work on moving a patch of gel from one of the more heavily armored parts of her suit to replace the torn piece.

But Halsey stopped her one more time. She said, "Noble Six?"

Six stopped, looked over her shoulder. "Ma'am?"

"What is your real designation?"

"Aislinn-B312."

As she walked slowly toward the door, Six wondered why she had given her name so quickly. She'd grown used to Halsey getting answers, and had assumed that the doctor had already known Six's name from her files. Why ask if she already knew?

It was a relief when the medsuite door opened at her touch. Both Jun and Relk were seated on the other side of the room now, the Covvie's elbows propped on his knees. Jorge had been watching at the two-way mirror, his helmet under one arm.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Yes, or I will be soon."

"Good." He smiled.

She said, "Jun and Relk are supposed to go in next."

They did, the Elite acting noticeably grumpy as Jun directed him where to go by prodding him. When the doors shut, Six could see but not hear Halsey direct Relk to sit on the table and Jun to stand near the door.

Jorge returned his attention to Six. She said, "She asked me my name. I thought that was odd. Is that odd?"

He gave his answer the gravitas she thought it deserved. "Halsey is hard to read, sometimes. She's looking out for us. Trust me."

In a bright burst of blue, Kalmiya appeared almost between them. "Three members of the surviving Spartan teams, 039, 030, and 043, have found the entrance to this base and are attempting to decrypt the door access. Two others, 104 and 087, are inbound in stolen Covenant craft."

Through the glass, Six could see Halsey look up, as if Kalmiya was projecting her voice and not her holographic body inside. The door opened again, and Jun leaned out.

He said, "Get ready to move."


	15. Red Team

_A/N: Some dialogue recycled from "First Strike". I'm trying to keep this so that it's understandable whether you've read the books or not. Also this Six-Relk conversation is kinda for SurferSquid._

* * *

**XV**

Halsey hustled the four of them through branching hallways. Six took point with her pistol and an assault rifle Halsey had been saving for a rainy day. In the middle of the group, the doctor and Kalmiya talked rapidly about what entry point the other Spartans were coming in through. Jun and Jorge followed with their longer-range weapons, Relk trotting between them. No one had discussed giving him a weapon.

Kalmiya said, "104 and 087 have found their teammates, and together they are attempting to enter this facility through ventilation shaft beta-three. The security measures there have been compromised. Red team is locked out."

"Then we can open it from the inside." Halsey's voice was inflectionless as her low-heeled shoes clicked against the floor. Six wasn't sure how she could move this fast in them.

"The shaft is five hundred meters ahead."

Halsey did not reply.

The Spartans marched. Six's HUD eventually registered the five green dots of the other Spartans. With extra tweaking she could display their names and parts of their service records. Vinh, the only name she couldn't immediately recognize as gendered, was a female S-II; not much more was said.

Her booted feet also registered more disturbing signals. The ground was shaking and rocks shifting outside, as if the Covenant were trying to get in. There were hundreds of feet of dark rock between the tunnels and the surface, but the noise of attack was still getting through.

Halsey said, "When we reach the entrance, keep the Elite back."

They reached the sealed door. Jorge clamped a hand around Relk's forearm while Six and Jun took defensive positions on either side of the passage. Jun gestured for Halsey to come closer to the wall, but she remained steadfast.

Jun said, "They might be under fire, m'am. I would stay back if I were you."

Over the speakers set beside the door came a six-note whistle; the Spartan all-clear signal that sent relief flooding through Six almost unconsciously. Someone on the other side was sing-songing: ollyollyoxenfree...

Doctor Halsey opened the door.

The five Spartans crowded into the hallway outside all wore green MJOLNIR armor. All were taller than Six, although the leader was not by much. In a moment of inspection she could note varied body types, although not gender, among them. There were identifying marks too; one had a white rabbit stenciled on their chest plate, another had a stencil of crossed knives.

Halsey said, "Come in. And hurry. From the sounds of things upstairs we haven't much time. And don't shoot the Elite."

Six and Jun stood down as the Spartan-IIs filed in. As soon as the leader saw Relk, they all raised their weapons. One had a massive Jackhammer rocket launcher propped on one shoulder.

The leader spoke, revealing himself as male. "That's not what I expected to hear. Hostage?"

"Something like that. It's good to see you, Fred."

Halsey greeted each of the Spartan-IIs in turn, hugging some and shaking hands with others. Then the group, now nine in total, started back down the corridor. All of them aimed suspicious, golden-visor glances back at Relk. Six ended up in the rear guard with the Elite even as she tried to get around him to walk next to Jorge. She tried to keep track as Halsey named each new Spartan in turn, but it was so hard to tell them apart. Noble Team's color-coded identities hadn't prepared her for it. Fred, the leader, was shorter than the rest, at around Jun's height. Kelly had the rabbit mark; either Isaac or Vinh had the knives, although Six couldn't see which was which from behind them. Will carried the rocket launcher.

Six listened as Red Team explained that the Covenant were still trying to get inside the human fortifications, and bringing in heavy digging machinery. Halsey asked about people Six didn't know, although John was mentioned. Then Fred asked permission to speak freely.

"Certainly. I don't stand on ceremony, especially considering the circumstances. Speak your mind."

"Ma'am, there's an Elite in your party. That isn't normal. And Jorge. I remember you, but you dropped off records years back. What happened? Who are these other troops?"

"They're Spartans." Halsey looked imperiously at Six and Jun. Six shivered under her suit. They might be the last two Spartan-IIIs left alive, and the twos didn't even know that the rest of Noble Team or Beta Company had ever existed. It was chilling and strange. Halsey said, "The Elite has been defanged, metaphorically speaking, or at least for the moment. He and Jorge worked together to get back to Reach from Covenant space." Jorge nodded. The other twos managed to look quizzical by tipping their heads like birds. Six could have sworn that there were implied raised eyebrows aplenty.

She couldn't stay quiet. "I'm Spartan-B312, trained on Onyx under Kurt Ambrose. Now Noble Six. This is Noble Three."

"Jun-A266." Jun introduced himself.

Now Fred definitely looked confused. "Kurt did this when?"

Halsey said, "Six and Jun are Spartan-IIIs. Far be it from me to tell you exactly what that means yet. They were developed outside my command...but have proven invaluable in the defense of Reach."

Jorge said, "They surprised me too and I learned to like 'em. What's the situation outside, Fred?"

"Dangerous. There's a whole Covvie army on top of us. I hope you have a good plan."

Halsey said, "I assumed you weren't here to let me know it was safe to come out. But I think we need to get you patched up before we encounter any more heavy fighting."

They had made it back to the cluster of rooms that Six knew. Kelly seemed the most hurt out of the new Spartans, and Halsey escorted her to a door. "Fred and Will, you're in the best shape. I want you to go down to Level Aqua, Section Lambda, and retrieve a few things. Kalmiya and I will assess the rest of the damage. Noble Team and...friend, keep watch."

Hidden doors and whispered passwords revealed larger rooms, outfitted with beds and medical equipment, that Six hadn't even noticed. She thought that this place must be pretty well fortified against the Covenant if even Spartans couldn't quite get their bearings. None of the digital maps she had been issued even contained this fortress.

Fred and Will saluted and headed off to parts unknown, and Halsey disappeared inside the new rooms with the other three newcomers. Six was left looking nervously at Jorge.

Relk sat morosely on the same chair he had recently vacated.

Six said, "So. You know them?"

Jorge said, "I trained with them, but it's been a long time. I was pulled off the records to work with Noble Team because you needed a gunner."

"That was before Six's time," Jun clarified. "We had one sniper, one hacker, one hand-to-hand, and Carter and Thom for...well, they were for mindless heroics."

Jorge put a hand on Six's shoulder. He started to speak, the crackling edge of the words filtering through her earpiece, but then stopped. Six nodded anyway. There was a hard road ahead. She couldn't even begin to think of a plan to clear the surface...and besides, clearing the surface wasn't the objective. Reclaiming Reach was. The way Jun spoke about Thom and what Noble Team had been before she came showed that he thought highly of those days, and Six wanted her own time with the whole team back. She couldn't revive the dead, but reviving the planet would be a step toward redemption for all of them. Just as Reach was Jorge's home, Noble Team was Six's. She'd never felt more comfortable with a group of people, even her training group. Sure, Kat and Emile could be snappish, but the team was...almost a family.

And now there were these new Spartans, so maybe she could get the family back, and then the planet.

Relk said something. Three masked faces turned toward him. The Elite burbled with small motions of his four jaws, and Six glared, remembering how close one of his kind had come to biting her face off.

Now that had been some quality family time.

"What?" She turned toward Relk, spreading her hands.

The Elite cocked his head and blinked. He was still wearing the formal armor he had been dressed in when he was captured, but he somehow looked smaller now. He wore the gaudy purple that afflicted so many of the Elite ground troops, and Six could see patches of orange under-armor blanketing his dark brown skin. She tried to catch his eyes under the helmet.

She looked sidelong at Jorge, trying to match Halsey's authoritative tone. "How much English does he speak?"

"Almost nothing."

Six turned back in time to hear Jorge mutter, "About as much as I did when I started training." She kept looking at Relk as the men bantered behind her. She tried to see something besides malignant intelligence in Relk's beady, black eyes.

His species-his caste- had killed her parents.

Jun said, "We're not training the Covvie as a Spartan,"

Jorge said, "Of course not."

"He's a bit too old for that."

Six knew that the Spartan-IIs had been created largely as a defensive measure. The UNSC knew that it needed new and better troops to deal with the increasingly well-organized Insurrection. And so Halsey had worked her magic.

But the Spartan-IIIs had been created after humanity learned about the Covenant, the aliens who were going to spread across the galaxy no matter how hard they tried to stop them. Threes were meant as a last defense. A successful one, yes, but threes were also cannon fodder. That was only made worse by the fact that, unlike the threes, the twos were portrayed to the public as heroes. Threes stayed anonymous.

Six could remember her parents. She could remember, in strange flashes of memory and color, what had been taken away when the Covenant had attacked her planet.

Jorge couldn't understand that.

That didn't make her love him less, or work with him less; it was just the way things were, and he was still there for her in all the ways he needed to be. Nor did it make her less herself. She still could find the good in the situation-she still got to fight, after all. She still felt that thrill with a gun in her hands and this is what we're made for in her ears-

But it meant that she couldn't understand relating to Relk in any way besides hatred.

He looked up at her. She tensed, her hands forming fists. It didn't matter that he could see her intention and her fear. Let him know that she wasn't going to be soft if he tried to escape.

Of course it would be a more difficult escape now, with eight Spartans on the team.

Relk lifted his hand. Six had her pistol unstrapped from her hip in a moment-she braced her back foot on the ground and held the gun in both hands, although she wasn't going to raise it yet in such close quarters to her teammates. She shouted, "Hey-"

The male Spartans immediately stopped talking to look at the confrontation, Jun also going for his weapon. Six stood stock-still.

The Elite held his hand out, fingers spread and palm empty, and wagged it slightly through the air. "Oh," Six said gradually, and extended her hand.

She kept the pistol in her left hand as she shook with the right. Relk's fingers wrapped all the way around hers, and the bare joints were cold. After one shake, Six's expression was starting to twist around under her mask, and Relk pulled away so fast that Six clamped her hands together on the pistol again. Jorge and Jun were silent and attentive.

Relk said, "Wrack."

Six cocked her head.

"Wralk."

"Er," said Six. "Six."

Relk nodded.

Six backed away slowly.

She saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye as Jorge raised his hand to his ear. Six heard Halsey's voice over her own comm a second later.

"Get back to the lab ASAP. I might have a way out!"

The remnants of Noble Team came to attention.

Then Six's feet lost their place as the floor seemed to turn sideways. She braced herself against the wall as an earthquake rocked the lab. Her splayed hand registered that it wasn't a natural event- the thrashing of the walls was coming from above. The Covvies were trying something new. The shaking stopped, but booming sounds echoed from above the chamber. Six patted Jorge's arm as she marched past him, signaling with the other hand for Jun to take care of Relk. The priority right now was the civilian inside the lab.

Then the lights went out.

A moment later, the three Spartan-IIs who had gone inside the medical suite pushed out the door, helmet lights shining. Six turned on her own and the room became bathed in bright green.

Rabbit-marked Kelly-087 was carrying a bloodied Doctor Halsey over her shoulder.


	16. Exodus

**XVI**

Jorge rushed toward Kelly and Halsey, sounds starting in the back of his throat but they would come out more as roars than words if he let them, so he didn't.

Kelly let Halsey slide down from her shoulder. The doctor was alive and blinking, blood trickling from her nose and starting to cake black. Kelly said, "Her office collapsed. Support beam missed her by a centimeter."

Halsey stood shakily. "I'm fine. Really."

Jorge supported her with a forearm and open hand, letting her grab onto his arm as she needed. None of her bones appeared broken. If Kelly said something missed her by a centimeter, it had been exactly a centimeter. Halsey mostly looked shocked.

Jorge looked over his shoulder as Fred spoke.

"With all respect, ma'am, you're not."

The room was still shaking. Dust plumed through previously unseen cracks in the walls and the banks of computers.

"Hey, heavy weapons guy." Jun was pawing through the crates of supplies that Will and Fred had retrieved. "Take a look at this stuff."

Jorge looked down at Halsey. It was important to protect her before moving on to anything else. "Are you prepared to move?"

"I'm fine, Jorge." But she didn't resist when Fred extended his hands to help her up onto the nearest examination table.

Jorge joined Jun, Six, and, after a moment, Fred, at the supplies. It was a nice cache, containing weapons and armor that Jorge was curious about but couldn't quite identify. Fred said, "MJOLNIR mark five. Only the best for the squad under siege." Jun appreciatively sighted down the scope on what was marked as a BR55, while Six loaded her pistol and grabbed one of the new rifles as well. Investigating the new armor would have to wait. This cache plus the Jackhammer that Will was carrying meant that the cobbled-together team was pretty well-equipped.

Moments later, Isaac and Vinh returned to the room in a rush. "Enemy contacts at extreme range."

The next few moments were a rush of gathering food, water, and the new supplies. Will hauled most of the equipment in the large crates, whereas Jorge packed the rest in his backpack. Halsey announced that she knew routes downward that might lead into caves beneath the mountain where they could survive unbothered. Jorge watched her carefully as she bid farewell to Kalmiya. The AI would monitor their initial descent, but would need to be deleted afterward. She was far too valuable to fall into Covenant hands.

Halsey turned to address all of the Spartans, looking evenly at both twos and threes. "I've activated the explosives cache under this base, which will level the complex. We have to get below, to the original titanium mine tunnels."

Fred took the lead, ordering the lights killed and assigning places to the Spartans. He also picked up Halsey, letting her get her arms around his neck. The ten of them set out with Halsey in their center. Jorge, Kelly, and Six took the front, followed by Jun covering Relk. Kelly held a can of talc powder in one hand, which would be useful for locating stealth-shielded Elites. Will and Halsey followed, with Isacc and Vinh in the rear. Fred had hesitated over putting Six, who was better with light weapons and hand-to-hand, in the front of a fight that would ideally, in close hallways, stay at long range. Then he had paused, lights flickering in his helmet as he looked at her record.

Something, probably the hyper-lethal title, convinced him that she would be most valuable at the fore.

They ran into trouble at a lofty intersection of five corridors. The number markers on the walls pointed to levels that were mysterious to Jorge.

Kelly signaled for the group to stop. She crouched and rolled the can out into the intersection. It hissed and released its powder, snowing a light-colored mist over the hunched forms of four stealthed Elites.

* * *

Relk 'Forsovai was outnumbered. He saw the Sangheili coming toward him; four tall, well-equipped stealth fighters as enthusiastic as any in the Prophets' army. He also saw four green-armored Spartans fill the corridor and open fire. One of them set down the ninth human, and she put her back to the wall on the other side of the Spartan sniper and pulled out a pistol.

Bullets pinged off shields and illuminated more of the shielded forms than the talc powder had. Two Sangheili fell before Relk could open his mouth to warn them. What was he going to warn them of, anyway? They had decided to attack, instead of being comfortably protected...by the demons.

Sure, he still wanted to get back to the fleet. But it seemed like the more he tried, the more the Forerunners in charge of his life didn't want him to. He wanted most of all to hang on to that life.

* * *

Light flared to Six's right as Kelly lashed out with both pistols. One Elite fell; the next two bounded forward. Six thought she could hear the huffing sounds of their breath. She crouched low and shot one twice under the neck armor, tearing up its lower jaws. It probably couldn't even feel an injury like that; without stopping it kept barreling forward.

Kelly stepped out of the way into one of the branching corridors just as Jorge opened fire and shot the next two Elites. The one Six had started finally fell; another reeled back with blood flecking its shoulders as Fred finished it off. Fred ordered the Spartans to spread out into the entranceways of the other halls, and Six took the position opposite Kelly. She glanced back to see whether Halsey was all right and saw the doctor stationary but armed. Isaac offered her his arm as he passed.

Six covered the side passage-and saw another shielded Elite shimmer out of one of the corridors. "Tango at one o'clock."

She opened fire.

* * *

Relk was still pondering. Six's back advanced and retreated out of the corner of his eye as she danced like a particularly orange version of the other demons. No shots had come anywhere near Relk...as long as he kept his long neck as bent down as possible. The white-coated human was just as safe, although she kept trying to peer around the Spartans' arms to get a look at what was going on in the hall.

Playing like he was friendly with the demons wouldn't get him more honor in either the eyes of the gods or Field Commander Kas'Orogai, but it would help him survive. He'd almost gotten Jorge and Six convinced that he was on their side. He was working on learning their language, even though the accent seemed both impossible and offensive. He had already picked up some words, and felt that staying with this group for a few more days was the best way to learn.

So maybe Jorge and Six, the demons he had followed around the longest and the cause of his original problems, could be convinced that he was harmless. The others, not so much. He thought he might have met his first civilian today; at least, the one wearing the white coat wasn't as strong as the warrior demons. He might be able to escape if he was left alone with her.

A combination of playing out that scenario in his head and seeing the bodies on the floor as the Spartans walked over, talking among themselves, made Relk also remember his last few moments on Long Night of Solace. He had been so ready to fight when the officer challenged his subordinate. He hadn't cared who he fought in that room full of trained Sangheili.

Where had that bravery gone?

As for the trained Sangheili in front of him, the last one was running. Relk tried to catch his eye as the last Elite, his stealth shield gaining a milky translucence and then disappearing entirely, started around the corner at the end of the hall. More yellow-edged fire from the Spartans drove him away.

Relk gave a half-hearted, human wave to his retreating back.

Now, although the anger started to pick at the insides of his skin, he couldn't twitch without Spartans closing around him like walls.

Relk growled.

Luckily, he did it at the same time that the smallest human said something and the others broke into a run. They jostled Relk as he tried to keep up, his long legs unable to reach their full stride without his shoulders knocking into an armor plate on one side or another.

* * *

The hall was filled with moving Spartans, and if Six just squinted she could pretend that it was Noble Team-

but no. If anyone broke the illusion best it was Relk, the layered, scale-like plates of his armor bobbing along in the middle of the group like the long neck of a dinosaur. And it was Fred who said, "One of them got away. We need to move-and forget quiet."

Six tucked her rifle close to her chest and ran in with the others. Explosions kept shaking the corridor. Five hundred feet later Kelly stopped at a pair of elevator doors, the white-painted walls looking oddly innocent. Fred and Vinh stepped forward and pried the doors apart at the seams.

Inside the shaft, the thick, dark elevator cables extended down to a distance Six could barely see. Smaller cables swung in tiny green-black parabolas. Six asked, "We're going down there?"

Halsey said, "There should be an air vent half way down."

Kelly clicked her status light in mute acknowledgement and extended one green-clad arm to wrap her palm around the nearest cable. She swung out over the void and started climbing down hand-over-hand as soon as the cable had taken her full weight. Six backed away a barely noticeable inch. The last time she had been near a big dark void was not exactly a moment she wanted to relive.

But by the time Fred had gone down just as quickly, the moment had passed. Jorge was behind her. He negotiated with Will for charge of Halsey and went down into the shaft with her arms around his neck, looking at Six over his shoulder as he went. The gold of his helmet turned honey-colored in the dark.

Then it was Six's turn. She reached out, grasped the cord, and then swung out to hook her ankle around the bottom and start climbing with both hands. Just like climbing ropes back on Onyx, except without somebody yelling at you to do it.

As if to argue the point, another explosion sent dust falling in clouds all through the shaft.

They climbed for a good length of time, silent and working.

"Doctor," Kelly reported from down the line. Jorge's progress stopped below her and Six hung on the cable, gripping tightly and feeling a manageable pain start in her shoulders. Above her, the cable creaked as Jun shifted above her. Even Relk was gripping the cable, his lanky body curled around it like he was afraid of heights. Six couldn't help smirking at the idea. Beside him, Vinh had elected on taking the second, smaller cable. Six saw the older woman look down as emergency lights added a line of white glow to the Spartans' green night vision.

Kelly said, "I think this is it."

Halsey craned her neck. "That leads to the old mine tunnels-and more, I hope."

Fred said, "Go."

Six saw Kelly slide from the cable to the wall, disappearing into a deeper darkness no more than a second later. After a few moments, her status light blinked green. It was safe to go in.

When it was Six's turn, she stepped off the cable onto a narrow platform and immediately had to maneuver to her hands and knees. The vent was too small for even Halsey to stand up in, and dust and bits of dead insects stuck to Six's gloves as she crawled. Jorge and Halsey were a tangle of darkness in front of her.

A moment after Six started wondering what larger aperture the duct could possibly lead to, she saw more emergency lighting. The other Spartans exited the narrow shaft feet-first. Six followed, brushing the dirt off her gloves.

The passage the vent had opened out onto was meant for heavy machinery. Treaded tracks in either direction were visible through a thin layer of gray dust. She craned her neck to look at marbled rock walls ten meters high, seemingly cut right out of the bottom of a mountain.

"There's more to this place," Halsey said as Isaac, the last of the party, clambered out of the vent. Explosions and digging machinery kept rumbling in the distance. "This is only the beginning. We have to-"

A massive boulder of granite and its accompanying rain of rocks and dust fell out of the ceiling like an airstrike. Six yelped and raised her hands in front of her face as she tried both to get out of the way and to see where Halsey and Relk went. More ceiling thudded to the floor, one rock striking her back plate and driving her to her knees. No pain, but there wouldn't be yet with the confusion around her, status lights winking. Jorge's name started and died on her tongue. Another rock smacked down on her right arm, sending shockwaves through her protective gel, but didn't buckle her armor. A moment later the fall slowed, pebbles clattering down, and Six fought out from under the pieces of ceiling, heaving rocks away. Spartans groggily rose like wakening giants around her, their green armor coated with gray dust.

Someone coughed, and Six turned to see Jun actually bracing on Relk's shoulder as both of them clambered to the bare floor. The sniper coughed a few more times. Six couldn't tell whether Relk had agreed to being used as a support or had just been conscripted into it.

Fred stood up. "Report!"

Kelly shook off and stalked across open ground. "Red-Two."

Isaac crawled over a pile of rocks. "Red-Twelve."

Vinh was out of the rubble too. "Red-Thirteen."

Six clambered over the pile of ceiling to find Jorge just getting to his feet, still curled around Halsey. Six extended a hand and the doctor caught it as firmly as if it were intended for her. Halsey was breathing heavily but didn't look any more beat up than before. All of them were going to need medical evaluations after this.

Will said, "Red-Thirty-four."

There was some silence. Six looked around. Carter should be here now. Carter should be calling his team together.

Someone had to. So she did, slightly louder than intended. She said, "Noble Six."

Jorge stood up and nodded at her. "Noble Five."

Jun folded his arms. "Noble Three."

And he looked at Relk.

Relk growled something that was definitely not "Wralk." Six guessed that it was probably more along the lines of "I just got a pile of rocks dumped on my head because of all of you."

The Spartans looked at each other.

The air vent was blocked off, as was the rest of the corridor. Halsey walked into the center of the group, looking at the wall of rock and cracked ceiling, as Jorge took Six's hand and squeezed.

Halsey said, "I, I see our choice has been made."

Fred said, "This might prevent them from getting at us. We should move forward."

Jun said, "Unless they created it and we're walking into a terrible trap."

"You're made to move forward," Halsey said, and Six felt the truth of that in her bones and the tendons of her legs.

Headlamps burning actinic white against the dark, Relk nervously orbiting at the edges of Jun's light, the group moved down the tunnel into unmarked places.

* * *

_Author's note: I've been getting a lot of reviews lately, and that's great. Thanks for following this crazy story as it does stuff I never expected it to do._

_But do me a favor, and if you're going to leave me corrections to my canon facts in your reviews, leave something constructive about the writing itself too. And please check to see if anyone else has caught your fact already. I'm sometimes getting info from wikis here and, also, writing an AU. Decent prose is more important to me than perfect facts. Thank you, the management._


	17. Parting the Red Team

_A/N: So, ah, I started watching Red vs. Blue the other day._

_Things may one day be the same again._

_Who's up for some Washington angst?_

_I mean, all attempts will be made to continue normal "If There Are Wolves" programming. ^_^_

* * *

**XVII**

They walked through long corridors. At first, the path retained signs of being used by human mining equipment and tanks. Within half a mile, though, that equipment seemed to have given up. The reason for that was clear. The diggers had hit a small, maybe nine-foot high fissure in the granite they had been boring through. It could have been mistaken for something natural had strange symbols not been so determinedly chiseled into that winding way.

The Spartans crowded around it- and then Relk pushed to the front of the circle. He put his hands on the walls and peered at the symbols until Six got bored of his going over the markings line by line, and watched Halsey watch him instead. What was she thinking? Was she going to come up with some way to use him?

The other Spartans were respectfully silent until Relk turned around.

Jorge said, "He understands them."

"What-" Fred began, but was interrupted. Relk started shaking his head. No. No. No.

Halsey said, "Why not?"

Relk stood there at the center of eight masked stares. He lifted his hands, thought again about it, and dropped them.

He pointed upward and shook his head again.

Halsey said, "The ones above didn't make these symbols. They aren't modern Covenant language. Of course."

Fred asked, "So do we follow them?"

After a moment, Halsey said, "They should lead us to the ruins. Carry on."

So they did. As they walked, Six thought about how she knew almost nothing about these new Spartan-IIs. Inside their armor, they were making gestures she could clearly see. Vinh and Isaac were close; they tended to look to one another first when there was a question of route. The other two harked to Fred. He was a natural leader, unafraid to raise his voice. Will rarely spoke. His voice was mustier, and he didn't hold his shoulders as straightly. They were also all sustaining injuries now. Broken fingers and torn muscles would have to wait until they found somewhere to set up camp. Isaac favored his left hand, and Kelly had been nearly silent since the rockslide. Her breathing occasionally telegraphed through their team comm. Something was wrong in her lungs, and Six hoped that Halsey had something to fix it. But they couldn't stop yet. Relk had given them no information about the symbols.

As Six passed them, she ran her hand along the wall. The symbols had been cut into the smooth strip of granite that ran along the path at about shoulder height. They also crawled along the bare, raw rock, saturating the walls. This place meant something to the Covenant, but the humans hadn't had time to figure out anything about it except that it was there.

"We'll interrogate him," Halsey said quietly to Jorge. "We can teach your Elite some English. It won't give him more information about us than he already knows. All the work I've done on the Covenant languages, I left those behind Kalmiya."

Jorge said, "As long as we keep to the Cole Protocol."

Halsey said, "Really, Jorge, do we have any need to mention Earth here? It's as far away as if we were in another galaxy."

Six patted her hand on her thigh plate, digesting those words. Halsey was right. They were far from Onyx too. Not only did they not have a slipspace-capable ship, this was the first time that Six had even thought of space travel as an option in the near future. There was too much to get through first. Caverns, Covvies, blockades, retaking Reach. Getting a ship was so far in the future that the possibility didn't even matter.

One thing at a time.

She had to speak up. "Maybe this'll be fun. We can teach him how to repeat things. Like a parrot."

Jun said, "The only phrase I want to hear repeated right now is 'here is your fresh-cooked moa burger.'"

Six thought about it. "I wonder what happened to the moas."

"If I may interrupt." That was Fred, and his commanding tone put Six on alert. She said, "Lieutenant?"

Fred said, "We need to re-organize our call signs. There's a mishmash of Red Team and Noble Team here, but we're in this together now. I'm instating new designations-with permission."

Six wasn't even sure who was supposed to be in command of Noble anymore, and the others seemed to agree. Jorge said, "Let's hear it."

Fred said, "We'll be more organized if we all register as Red Team."

This was true. Camaraderie, Spartan or otherwise, was half mental. It got helped along by names. So, because the majority was made up of Red team survivors, the whole party would become Reds.

So Fred re-christened them. Fred and Kelly remained One and Two. Will, Isaac, and Vinh became Three, Four, and Five.

When he got to number six, Fred looked at Jorge. As the other Spartan-II, it would make sense for him to get the next number.

But Jorge stopped in the middle of the hallway and said, "But she's Six."

Fred looked at Aislinn.

She said, "Hi."

She wasn't going to argue with him, but her name really was more than a number to her. She'd been called Aislinn in the Sabre program, but for years afterward she had been simply S-B312. That designation meant lone wolf- it identified her efficiently by the company she had been raised in, the order in which they'd pulled the S-IIIs out of the wreckage of their homes, and her adopted species- the Spartans. Aislinn was the name given to her by her parents, who, though she thought of them often, were not of that adopted species. When she had joined Noble Team, "Six" had been what everyone called her. Being with other Spartans again had been a relief, and so she associated that name with all of Noble and the friendliness she had felt toward them. It was, in a way, her truly Spartan name.

And on the night before the Solace, Jorge had asked her name.

She'd left him with "Six." If Fred wanted to take Noble away from her, it would be nice if he didn't take that too.

Those thoughts and memories took seconds. She recovered her poise. "With all due respect, I agree with him. I'd like to keep it."

Fred's chin cocked, but he said, "Okay. Red Six. Jorge, you get Red Seven. Jun. Eight."

Fred said, "I guess the Elite is Red Nine. In theory."

Jun said, "We can't exactly get that through his head, and he doesn't have a comm we can patch into anyway."

So Relk's membership was theoretical.

After this exchanged, Fred went back to silence. The new Red Team walked, their footsteps tamping down against the rock. Relk's claws clicked like Halsey's heels. The passageway's texture and width varied slightly as it pushed its sharply-curving way into the darkness, but it never got too narrow for two Spartans to stand next to one another. It also seemed to be heading in a particular direction, but the compass Six could call up on her HUD had stopped functioning miles ago. She couldn't tell what that direction was.

Aislinn grew antsy in the silence and switched to Noble's private comm frequency. Red Team or not, it still tight-banded to Jun and Jorge's comm units. She said, "What do you think of this system? At least I'm still Six."

"I'd go to being Red Five. That's familiar," Jorge said. "But Fred's got a system down well enough."

Jun said, "Didn't anyone else want to tell him to frag his fancy system and let us stay as Noble?"

Six immediately volunteered. "Yep."

Jorge hummed a negative. "It won't be different enough to cause trouble."

Jun said, "Says you. They're your classmates."

Jorge growled, "Who I haven't seen in years. We're not the same any more."

Six's urge to keep the family from bickering kicked in. "We'll get to know them."

"Sure," said Jun. "Just like we're getting to know the Covvie."

"You're the one who always says you don't hate the enemy."

"I didn't want to be bunking with them either."

"Hey, at least they're not ODSTs."

* * *

"At least they're not ODSTs," Will said. Fred put a hand to his chin to check that his signals were correct; Will was restricting his call to the former Red Team.

Vinh said, "But what are they?"

Fred turned his head to look over his shoulder at Halsey. Armor and mesh cloth creaked.

The doctor didn't have access to their channel; she was as clueless as they were, as far as Fred knew.

He supposed they could just out and ask her...or ask the new guys.

Will said, "They look like Spartans."

"Always the understatement," Vinh said. "I think they are Spartans. You can see the service records. Tagged with sierra like ours."

Isaac said, "Halsey called them Spartan-Threes."

Kelly said, "Just get it over with and ask if she doesn't tell. We need to know the strength of our team." To Fred's surprise, she took her helmet off. Halsey looked at her, but the others didn't seem to care. Kelly's short, brown hair didn't quite cover the AI port at the base of her skull.

"Doctor. We need stats on the new troops. They are Spartans, aren't they?"

Halsey looked up into her eyes. "Of course. They're the next generation: Spartan-threes. Almost as capable as you are, and not so...well. I was not privy to the exact methods of their construction, but their augmentations are not unlike yours. You should work together efficiently. Talk to Jorge. He's been assigned to them for months. He knows more than I do."

"What it comes down to," Fred said, "Is whether they are effective."

"Undoubtedly."

Fred nodded. Then there was no reason for him to think of them as anything but members of his team. More reinforcements were more reinforcements.

And the path they were all walking together was getting more complicated. He turned ahead as Kelly put her helmet back on and stood beside him. The path was opening out. The decorated walls on either side bulged outward to make a corridor almost wide enough to be called a room. In another few steps he could see the black gulf of a branching path opening off of it, and another one on the opposite side two meters down. The ceiling retreated to twenty feet. Footsteps started to echo.

Halsey was craning her neck to get as much information as possible out of the parts of the hall illuminated by the Spartans' lights. Fred held up a hand for the group to halt. There were no foe markers squatting redly in the distance on his radar, but in a place this unknown, it was always good to scout.

He held up two fingers and pointed into the hall, telling Kelly to scout ahead. "Don't go farther than where you can see our lights."

"Yes sir." And she was off, jogging into the dimness at a quarter of her full speed. It wasn't a place where her legendary sprinting was needed, but Kelly was a good scout.

He watched her light bob away and shine into each branching corridor in turn. The symbols on the walls hadn't changed at all, except that they became more adventurous, diverting from the central pattern more often. The ceiling seemed even more raw than before, with faces and shields of cave rock making it much more uneven than the machine-cut tunnel. This vault would be rough and crystalline to the touch.

Fred watched Kelly's light grow smaller. Fifteen seconds later she came jogging back.

"The corridor widens out," Kelly reported, standing at attention. "It's a proper cave one hundred meters in. I couldn't see the top in some places, but no natural light either. Two paths like the one we took to get here branch off on the left and right. I'd have to go in to explore how deep."

"Good work." Fred turned to Halsey. "Doctor, you don't happen to have a map of this place, do you?"

She thought for a moment. "Did the other hallways have symbols like this one?"

"No, ma'am."

"Then we keep following this one. The markings are here for some reason. Even if they aren't a path, they show the direction that was most important to the creators of this place."

"That's pretty much a path," Vinh murmured.

Fred held up a hand. "Vinh. You do not have permission to speak freely. Trapped or not, we are still a cohesive unit. We are still UNSC. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir."

Fred realized that he was tenser than he thought. He shouldn't have snapped. He'd been worrying about discipline and the chain of command falling apart, but hadn't even admitted it to himself.

He hadn't expected the threat to come from Vinh, and of course it wasn't, really. Not yet, not any more so than from any of the others. But he had seen the results of tests where people were put in solitary confinement and came out of it crazy.

Spartans were supposed to be more stalwart than regular humans, both physically and mentally. They should be fine.

And besides, the walls were opening out.

Fred spoke louder over his external speakers. "The cave widens out up ahead. Move out! Three, Seven, cover the side passages and delegate teams to stay with you. Keep an eye on the sides. Eight, rear guard."

The chorus of quick responses set his fears at ease.

Slowly, the group moved down the hall. Lights illuminated the narrow corridors as Jorge and Will kept an eye on the side passages. Gradually, they passed those dark mouths and entered the larger cave.

Then, he heard scuffling feet.

* * *

Six had listened when Kelly and Fred had talked to Halsey. It was bizarre to hear them wonder about her generation. Who did she know who had never met a three before? Simply because she had been trained with them, that was rare. It made her feel alien and curious. She wondered what it would be like to be one of the twos, created by evisceration, with the AI port plugged into the base of her skull. What had they seen? What did they feel?

What did Jorge feel?

She stayed close beside him, with Isaac on her other side. They covered the right side of the hallway, weapons raised, as the black gulf of the other pathway opening passed.

Something shuffled. Just as Six turned to look behind her, Jun's shoulder bumped into hers. He reeled, backing up and pushing her against the wall without seeing he was doing it. She saw Jorge move suddenly. Fred's voice came loudly over the comm. "What's the situation?"

Jun said, "Covvie made a break for it."

Six and Jun made moving room between them in time to see Relk sprint past Jorge.

Jorge said, "Orders?"

Fred's reply was fast. "Pursue! Do it, Eight. Seven, stay with the group. Make sure nothing comes out."

Relk did not flush out any lurking thing in the dark. Jun sprinted after him.

"Jorge," Fred called. "What happened?"

"We'd just passed the cavern. He just got behind me and dashed off."

Six wondered if he had purposely not brought up the idea of shooting Relk in the back. That would be bad for more than moral reasons: Halsey had said she wanted Relk around, and bullets in close quarters could ricochet.

Fred said, "Jun."

"Red One?" Jun's voice came from the middle distance. Six could just see the status lights on the shoulders of his suit bleeding a diminishing yellow circle into the stone.

"What's going on out there?"

"I'm chasing him!"

"Continue." Fred glanced at Halsey. "Don't go farther than radar range."

Jun's friend marker blinked acknowledgement.

"Let's go, Red Team. This is no place for a bivouac."

Jun's voice and radar signal remained strong as the rest of the team started to march. Jun was a scout and a sniper; Six knew that he was both good at and enjoyed solo missions. But she couldn't like sending someone out into a cave with the enemy.

Even if said enemy was pretty hapless.

Jun said, "I've reached some kind of rockslide. I can see another path further on, with more of the markings we've been following. Relk is out of visual but on my map."

Fred said, "Don't follow if it's going to compromise you getting back, understand?"

Halsey said, "Relk might be on to something. Take images of the walls. Don't go to far."

"Heard and understood. I presume this is a capture, not a kill, mission?"

Halsey said, "If at all possible."

"Yes ma'am."

Six said, "Shouldn't we send someone with him?"

Halsey said, "Jun has always worked well on his own before. Let him go. He'll come back."

The rest of the team was silent.

Then, Fred said, "Carry on."


	18. Relic

**XVIII**

As unlike as he was from his fanatic superiors, Relk was still, in his heart, religious.

And the spiraling, unreadable markings on these walls smacked of gods.

In a way, it was homey. At least the letters looked like something he would find somewhere on Sanghelios, instead of the blocky human letters he saw far too often in the enemy military.

But at the same time, that homeyness put a sort of pressure on him. Was he doing what the Forerunners wanted? Wasn't staying here in this pack of demons about as evil as a Sangheili could get?

It wasn't guilt. Covenant gods aren't big on guilt. They're big on honor and incentive and forward motion, not an inward spiral.

So, as he hustled off into the pitch-black darkness, feeling ahead with his hands, he wondered why he'd run away.

The only answer was that, when he'd seen a route of escape, he'd finally been incensed enough.

The Spartans had gotten used to him being there. They'd forgotten how smart he was. And so, he'd escaped them.

He could see lights from his pursuers in the distance, reflecting off his back armor and onto the symbols to either side. There hadn't been any symbols in the mouth of the cave, but it seemed that a moment of frantic running had brought him to more, just as wide and varied as the ones in the main corridor. This meant, of course, that the path the humans had fallen into might not be as main as they thought.

But, before sitting down and catching his breath with comforting thoughts of all of them getting bafflingly lost, he had to lose them.

The lights behind him got closer, and he turned away from them to look straight ahead and run. There was very little light for his eyes to adjust to. The path seemed to go straight, but the last thing (or maybe second-last) that he wanted was to run straight into a wall.

Maybe the lights were dying out. Panting, he slowed down to look behind him again.

(What was he doing down here? He had no food, no water, no radio...)

And no next step. His foot found empty air and his entire body lurched. The ground had shifted only a few inches down, but his foot found scree instead of solid rock. He slipped, and his flailing hands found exactly what he'd feared: a wall right in front of him.

Before he could think of turning around, his damaged balance meant that he planted his other foot in the scree and reeled forward. His hands caught at the uneven wall, but his feet were starting a rock slide. He fell down and to the left, rocks clattering all around him like rapids in a river, and couldn't stop falling.

* * *

Six watched Jorge set his backpack down on the blue-black rock as the other Spartans settled around him. They had reached a point where an intersection of four paths became wide enough to be more rightly called a cavern. Halsey had demanded a stop. They would wait for Jun here, as well as doing what medical improvements could be done, and studying the composition and age of the cave. The first thing they had taken out were large lights and a space heater.

Six couldn't deny that with Relk gone she felt a slight, strange sense like she had Jorge to herself again. The hike across Reach's scarred surface had been rough and frightening, both of them wounded and not knowing where they were going to end up.

But they had been on their own. She had been able to tell him things that were for him.

Fred and the others were settling down a few meters away. Will, his rocket launcher propped beside his right knee, had taken off his helmet. He was youthful-looking and brown-haired, and glanced around the cavern. Six noticed that his green armor was pretty much the same as that of all of his companions.

Only Kelly wasn't sitting with the group. Instead, she and Halsey talked in another corner while the doctor unpacked equipment from the large boxes the Spartans had been hauling.

Jorge looked up at Six before walking over to her. He followed her gaze to Halsey as well. They stood like that for a moment, one corner of a triangle of activity. Then he extended both of his hands to Six. "Come 'ere."

Puzzled and intrigued, she placed both her palms on top of his. He folded his hands over hers and backed closer to the cave wall. She let him guide her forward.

In a few steps they were outside the circle of light. She had turned her night vision off; she didn't like seeing the world all in green. The portable light from farther inside the cave reflected off Jorge's visor. Six could see the blinking status lights on both of their suits: chest, wrist, thigh.

Jorge brought her into an embrace, wrapping his arms around her while her own hands tucked against his collar. He propped his chin on the top of her helmet, going very still and holding her tight.

Six said, "What? What's wrong?" (Because there had to be an occasion for this; there was no reason otherwise. There had to be a cause.) "Are you worried about Relk?"

"Yeah," he said. She could not feel his voice rumble through the suit. His heartbeat was under there somewhere, but it was easier to monitor it on her headset than to feel it. "He's become a likable beast, even if I am just as worried about him bringing more Covenant down on us."

She said, "He can't. We've been caved in, remember? Jun will find him."

"You don't like him, do you?"

"I like Jun just fine." She smirked.

"Relk." She heard almost-laugher in his voice.

"No." She pushed her chin against his chest in a friendly rub. "I don't. But I like you. And I'm starting to not dislike Doctor Halsey. So I trust that he'll be back, because you two want him back."

He leaned away to look her in the eyes. "Thank you."

"It's what I'm here for."

He touched his chin to her faceplate in a metal kiss. "What're you thinking?"

She turned to look back into the light and felt his hands shift to her belt. (No reason-)She focused on the other Spartan-IIs. "Who are they? I mean, I know their names. But I want to get to know them."

He turned to face the same direction, settling one arm around her waist and pointing with the other. "That's Fred, that's Will...here. We'll just go talk to them." He disengaged from her and started back toward the light.

Six followed. She made sure to stand slightly in front of Jorge as they approached the group of threes. It was strange for her for height to be an issue, but here it was. She couldn't see over any of them.

They were sitting on crates in a circle, gauntleted hands resting on thick-armored knees. Will was speaking. "We lost how many people on Red Team?"

"Dozens," Fred said. "I've marked them all. MIA." He looked up as Jorge and Six approached.

"Permission to speak freely?" Vinh said. She had taken off her helmet too, revealing smooth brown skin and black hair bisected by a dyed scarlet line.

"Go ahead, Vinh. You know you don't really have to ask..."

Six got ready to reply to a greeting, but instead Vinh stared at Fred. "No...you know what, never mind."

Fred was taken aback. He glanced between Vinh and the Nobles. Six saw her own form reflected for a moment in his visor.

"Don't," Isaac said.

Vinh said, "Not in front of the visitors?" She gestured at Six and Jorge. "They're not visitors. They're part of the team. Welcome to having team problems."

Six felt like they were all staring at her. "What...are the team problems, exactly?"

Vinh said, "Nothing. Just wondering if anyone else is feeling antsy."

The unspoken things were almost visible, written in the walls. Six remembered Halsey implying that Red Team had been a massive strike force. They had lost a lot of people. And now they were stuck, under the rocks, waiting. Six could sigh the irritation away, could let it stick cold somewhere in the back of her mind that had been messed with in her augmentations. But she remembered that it hadn't been like that as the members of Noble Team passed away from her. The itch for revenge had been sharp and stinging when it could be sated immediately with a knife in a Covvie back, and cold and burning when it couldn't. Red Team needed their own time now.

Isaac said, "Vinh, I know how you feel."

"I don't," Fred said almost immediately. "We focus on the mission."

Will spoke up. "There's a ton of rocks between us and the surface. We don't even need to talk about getting out and kicking butt."

Jorge said, "I'm with him. We're stuck. We'll do what we can here."

The Spartans turned as one to watch Doctor Halsey approach them across the cave, heels clicking. Six wasn't sure how Halsey could stay on her feet on such tiny supports all day, but she'd also never worn heels herself. It probably wasn't as difficult as it looked.

Halsey said, "Excuse me, Will. I need that box."

Will quickly stood up, lying his rocket launcher down on the floor as he pushed the box he had been sitting on toward Halsey. As she opened the crate, she talked to the group but didn't look up. "I need a pressor field. This isn't going to be an easy operation. I have the equipment I need, just not a sterile lab and not an AI."

"Ma'am," said Fred, "what exactly does Kelly need done?"

"I'm cloning her a lung."

Six started, and saw Isaac do the same. She hadn't thought it was that bad.

Halsey looked at Six as if she had never seen her before.

Six said what she thought she should. "Er, if you need someone to help out..."

"Well, you do have the smallest hands here."

"I don't think I'm...certified for this, ma'am."

Pause. "Do you really think I'd let an untrained soldier into an operating field? You're wounded yourself. I'll do fine."

And Halsey picked up a large, umbrella-shaped device from inside the box and started to walk away.

Six whispered to Jorge. "Was that a joke?"

He said, "Textbook humor."

Halsey said, loudly, "I just need the box."

"We'll help." Will stood up and grasped one end of the box. Six took the other, and they wobbled it over to where Kelly lay on a bedroll on the floor. She waved with two fingers tucked down and three extended before flopping her arm back down beside her. Her top layer of armor had been set aside, and Six could see fractured, unnatural shapes underneath blankets piled over her chest. Six turned away quickly. Kelly's healthy complexion and attitude were more frightening in the light of her situation than if she'd been pale.

Halsey muttered, "Now we just need some brandy."

Six and Will set the box down as Halsey activated the pressor field. It was a bright blue bubble that extended from the umbrella-shaped stand. A technology derivative of battlefield bubble shields, it smelled like them too: heat and ozone.

"I'm going to put her under for at least six hours," Halsey said. "We did in fact manage to retrieve proper anesthetics and antibiotics. Do not disturb me unless it's absolutely critical."

Will upended something square and clear. "This is the clone tank?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Six said, "We'll say out of your way, ma'am."

"Good." Halsey stepped through the blue field. The glow lit the wrinkles at the underside of her face. Will paused, looking at the knee-high tank.

By the time Six and Will returned to the group, Jorge was sitting on the ground. He shifted over into the place the large box had used to be to make room for Six beside him. Will returned to his place next to Fred.

Fred said, "How is she?"

Will said, "The doctor seems confident that she'll come through. But I don't know."

They looked down at the ground: a collective advance mourning that resonated through Six even though she barely knew Kelly. It could be Kat in there. It could be any one of the Sabre pilots that she still thought of fondly. Name did not matter to the procedural silence.

* * *

Jun moved slowly through the darkness. Lines of runes at elbow level seemed to dive down the hallway in front of him, glowing almost white in his bright green night vision. If he stopped thinking about it for a moment, the path seemed to turn from horizontal to vertical. With steps so smooth, he might as well be falling.

When his feet crunched on broken stone, though, the world came back to horizontal. His light illuminated a sharp downturn in the path. It sloped away into what looked more like a wild cave than a constructed path, with an uneven floor of fist-sized rocks, and stalagmites chewing at the air. Jun stepped down carefully, rocks shifting and turning under his heavy, booted feet. Hydraulics in his legs measured tiny shifts as his muscles worked to keep his balance, and the hydrostatic gel pressed close against his skin almost like a reassurance. Keep calm. We'll handle this.

The metal shell of his armor kept his steps perfectly steady and his legs perfectly braced if he just relaxed into it and stepped.

It was four meters down at a roughly fifty degree angle, with the ceiling threatening to a claustrophobic head height, and then the floor leveled out. The ceiling rose. Jun moved slowly ahead, right hand slipping back to hang at his side from where it had been braced against the wall. He could still see his team on the radar, the yellow dots clustered at the far edge of the circle diagram. Relk's was still close, a red light that indicated that the supposed Red Nine couldn't be more than a few meters away from him. A few more steps, though, and he would lose the Spartans.

He took the steps. He muttered, "Darn it Jorge, you wanted me to get the Covvie back."

Jun was never afraid of being alone. Making other people worried about him was less appealing.

Carter had never worried.

Jun kept stepping carefully through the cave. After a short time, his lights illuminated a hunched form in front of him. Relk was kneeling on the ground beside a stalactite. Whatever he was looking at remained hidden behind it. The Elite's armor had been scuffed and dented by the trip down the rock fall.

When Jun spoke, he tried for companionable. He couldn't quite get the snark out of his voice, but that was how he talked to Noble Team anyway. For politeness sake he made sure to use the Elite's name-or at least the approximation of it that didn't make him sound like he was coughing. "Hey, Relk. You need to join up with the team again. We're going to get lost down here."

Relk turned around slowly. He leveled up to his full height without a sound. Something, held clutched in both hands against his chest, was glowing with an actinic flare that looked to Jun's night vision to be white.

Relk opened his four jaws wide, and screeched.


	19. Using Small Words

_A/N: Sorry about the delay: I would have gotten this chapter done a lot quicker if I hadn't left the first draft of the first section about four hours away from the location in which I wrote the middle. I move around a lot._

_Just a fun note: this is the second-longest fanfic I've ever written, slowly gaining ground on a novel-length Star Wars crossover I wrote a few years ago...which also involved crystals._

* * *

**XIX**

Relk pushed the item he had found away from him as he turned. "Don't touch it! It's dangerous!"

He knew he needed to use simple words.

It didn't really matter, though, that Jun couldn't understand him. They still might both be cursed or irradiated or both.

What did matter was that Jun was now pointing his rifle at Relk.

Slowly, Relk shook his head. Jun said something he didn't understand. Slowly, Relk turned and drew the item he had had found out into the open. "Reach," he said again, and shook his head. This artifact was not from this world.

Jun said something involving that oft repeated sound, "What."

Relk held up the crystal. It was heavier than it looked, finger-sized and diamondy. It had four sides, and varying widths, from three centimeters at one end to half that at the other. It was giving off heat he could feel through his gloves.

And it was an artifact that didn't quite pay attention to the same sorts of physics the rest of the universe did. Even though only a few of the crew of the Long Night of Solace, and certainly none of the humans, had known it, this crystal was one of the reasons why the Covenant invaded Reach. One reason was to hit the humans where it hurt, in the Spartan foundries near Earth. The other was to get this crystal shard out of human hands.

It couldn't really be this shard that they had been after, though, Relk thought. This one was too small, and there should be a huge amphitheater of a temple here to contain it. This piece had been knocked off and lost...perhaps by an hapless, ancient ancestor of Relk.

Relk didn't want the humans to learn how important this item was. Luckily, he couldn't explain it in their language if he tried. However, he did need to know more about it so that he could be sure it was worth reporting to his superiors, if he ever found them again. The human scientist could help with that.

Relk couldn't exactly hide the crystal behind his back, or drop it, and think that Jun would let him walk away. The Spartan's faceted helmet was fixated on the crystal, just like any creature's eyes would be. There was something hypnotic about it. This piece of rock could change civilizations. More importantly, somehow it made everyone who looked at it know that. Relk stared at it as he thought, wondering wordlessly about how the blue light got so blue...

He struggled to wrench his gaze away and think. Jun was moving slowly, as if he felt the trance too. But he was holding out one hand, gesturing to see the item. And Relk needed to play friendly. He needed to pretend that the crystal wasn't worth anything- if anyone could possibly think that!-so that he could keep it.

It was very, very difficult for him to just hand it over to Jun, but he did it anyway.

He sighed as he did. His mind was casting out in as many directions as there were corridors, and more, but he just could not think of any grand plan. He had been an Elite officer. He had commanded battalions of swordsmen. But this...this was more like spaceship combat. You had to know what your enemy was going to do minutes from now and kilometers away. It was making him jumpy.

Relk just couldn't find the foresight.

He found the old anger, though.

He could kill Jun right here.

"Alright then," Jun said. "Let's go. I'm bringing you back to camp."

The human almost turned his back before he looked over his thickly armored shoulder.

And Relk found, then, that the anger stopped. He didn't honestly want to kill the humans. Not this one, anyway. Relk had joined the military for personal advancement, and a fair lot of good that had done. It had always been about fighting to be the best in the commander's or Shipmaster's or Forerunners' eyes.

Humans weren't demons. They were just bumbling around the universe trying to be impressive just like he was. Jorge knew how to play at being impressive, and so did Halsey. Jorge reminded Relk of an Elite subaltern, sometimes.

Whatever humans were, he was starting to think that they didn't matter enough to the Forerunners to bother defining.

That could mean one of two things: either Relk went along with them and kept furthering his own goals, which was the only thing he wanted in the universe, or he let the rest of the Covenant fleet plough the humans over while he was sitting comfortably somewhere else. Preferably somewhere with a beach.

Either one worked. Getting in a thresh with a Spartan in close quarters, only to face more in the caves when the rest of Noble Team lost Jun's signal, wasn't worth the challenge.

Jun said, "What're you staring at?"

Relk replicated the sound he knew. "What?"

Jun didn't react...except to turn his back and start trudging up the corridor toward the rockfall. They could climb back up. It wouldn't be fun, but it was possible.

Relk followed him.

* * *

Six sat comfortably in her armor while the Spartan-IIs talked. She was tired; she was only starting to realize now that the last time she'd slept and eaten was before she'd met up with Jun in the theatre. Her leg wound didn't ache any more. Her helmet was still slightly cracked, leaving an annoying break in her field of vision.

Isaac said, "Why do you keep that Covvie around? Does he have information or something?"

Jorge shifted, like he was going to shrug and then decided it wasn't worth it. "He might. We haven't found out much about him yet."

Will said, "What, is he the team mascot?"

Jorge said, "Something like that."

Six took her helmet off. She immediately raked her fingers through her hair, finding tight little knots that showed she'd been sleeping in armor for far too long. Strands of hair caught on the chain of her dogtags and pulled painfully before she wrapped them around her finger and broke them loose. No one looked at her except at a glance; they were still talking about Relk.

She turned her helmet around and looked at it. Touching the cracked surface with her fingers would just make the blurring worse, although she felt the urge to do so. Into a moment of silence she said, "Does anyone have caulk?"

Will did. He dug a small tube of material out of one of the packs and passed it to her.

The material the Spartans called caulk was in fact a binding agent used for the transparent outer layers of the helmet visors. It would both break up physical breaches and send an electronic signal to her interior cameras, allowing them to slowly learn what sections of the visor her eyes were straying away from and repair that portion. She rubbed it into the yellow surface. It looked gummy at first, but slowly faded to transparency.

Fred said, "I've lost Jun's signal."

All of them looked up. Six pulled her helmet back on, blinking against the dark splotches where the caulk hadn't quite taken yet. There was the radar, all of the telltale dots clustered so close together it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Jun's yellow dot had been far at the bottom of the screen, edging over.

Now it was gone.

They got up almost as one and started toward the cave entrance. It was something of a shepherd mentality; one had been lost and they would leave ninety-nine-

But Six looked back and saw Kelly and Halsey just as Fred did. He held one armored arm up, brusquely signaling them to stop. The 'wait' signal flashed and then was tucked down with his fingers behind the armor plate on the back of his hand. "Don't rush in. Red Six, Red Seven, go to their last location and retrieve them. Keeping Red Eight alive is your priority."

Six was for a moment surprised when it was Jorge who stepped out of line to accompany her, but the use of his new number didn't break either of their strides. Six switched her night vision on and debated for a moment whether to open a private channel before instead using the open, Red Team line. She wanted the whole group of Spartans to work as a team, and that required openness and trust.

Jorge had done the same thing, although Six couldn't know whether he had also debated it. They moved slowly through the darkness. Although Six knew that they were only going over ground they'd covered earlier, the tunnels felt alien. She walked with her weapon lowered but ready.

It didn't take long for Jun's signal to appear again, this time with a red dot beside it.

"There he is," Six said. "And he's with Relk."

Fred's signal was already crackling. Even the best technology that the humans had got smothered in the thick rock at the roots of the mountain. Fred said, "I'll tag Relk as a friendly as soon as you have visual confirmation that that's our alien."

Jorge double-clicked an affirmation just as Vinh spoke.

She said, "As long as he's being friendly when you get there."

Six and Jorge kept moving forward. Six wondered about the significance of marking an Elite as a friendly. It was probably the first time in history someone had even wanted to. It wasn't like they could check with Colonel Holland to see if it had any precedent...if Holland was still alive.

She just couldn't get over her distrust of Relk. For more than a decade, her life, training, and sense of self had in part been driven by the image of the Covenant troop that had killed her parents. Could she let go of that?

Her radio crackled. She mentally shook herself as an undeniably friendly voice- Jun's-came over the comm. However, the signal was so blurred that the sound seemed to fly past. She couldn't understand the words.

Jorge said, "Red Eight, this is Red Seven."

They only had to walk a few steps more before they got a response. "Red Seven, this is Noble- I mean Red Eight. I've got Relk and we're climbing up this ridiculous rock slide, but should be at your location ah, shortly. Relk found some sort of alien artifact."

Six said, "Like the kind Halsey was here looking for?"

"I don't know what kind, but that's a good guess."

Fred said, "Glad to hear you again."

"Good afternoon. Or is it morning?"

Six heard sounds of climbing and laboured breathing, and then she and Jorge arrived at the offshoot where Relk had run away. A few minutes down that path, she saw the lights from Jun's suit. He and Relk were scuffed and tired but quite alive.

The crystal in Jun's hands glowed a faint blue between his fingers. Relk shied away when Jorge stepped forward to look at it.

Jorge said, "What is that?"

Jun said, "We're going to need more than hand signals to figure that out. Somebody's got to teach Relk his ABC's."

Fred said, "I think that's Doctor Halsey's job, Jun."

There was the sound of muffled voices just out of speaker range, and then Fred continued. "She says that she would like to talk to Relk, and that you need to get back here as soon as possible. Kelly's operation has gotten complicated."

The four of them started back to the camp, so fast that Six started jogging. So it was with an odd sense of the team members being replaced that she saw Relk's friend/foe marker blink, disappear, and come back glowing yellow.


	20. Downtime

**XX**

The Spartans gathered around the protected area where Kelly lay. The blue-green energy field kept the equipment inside sterile and, incidentally, protected its occupant's modesty.

Halsey stepped out of the field with her arms folded. Fred spoke up as soon as she did. "How's she doing?"

Halsey looked up at him. Her blue gloves were splattered with blood. She said, "Her condition can only be assessed after the procedure is finished, but it is going smoothly so far. I _did _ask you not to disturb me."

Fred tipped his head in surprise. "When you came out a few minutes ago, you said the operation was taking more time than usual."

Six piped up. "We thought there were complications, ma'am." That _was _what Fred had said over the comm.

Halsey sighed. "Replacing a _lung _in a _cave_ isn't like...it is not easy." Her patronizing tone made Six think a bitter _I know _immediately, but she didn't voice it. It wouldn't help to argue with Halsey, or even to get mad at her. Halsey simply was going to stay the way she was.

"So Kelly is stable?" Fred pressed.

"Yes," Halsey said. She closed her lips tightly, and the furrows between her eyes deepened. In the light of the stasis field she looked very old.

Jorge said, "Ma'am, I do think you should know about what Jun and Relk discovered."

Halsey brightened, her eyes seeming to shed age. "Ah yes. Some sort of alien device?"

Jun held up the stone. Halsey peered at it closely. She reached up to adjust her glasses, then rethought it when she remembered her blood-stained hands. Six wondered whether Halsey felt the hypnotic effect of the crystal too. It was mesmerizing..and of course it should be. It was such a fascinating thing. Six wanted to spend hours trying to figure out what it reminded her of. The blue matched the color of Reach skies-not the washed-out, red-tinged blue the sky had been when she and Jorge had trekked across the wasteland, but the real, bright, healthy blue of the first time she had ever been under Reach clouds. Maybe, in there somewhere, there were even Onyx colors.

Jun placed his hand over the crystal. It was like night falling. Six stepped back, frightened for a moment of what might inhabit the dark. That fear quickly turned into questions: how long had she been hypnotized? What had she missed while it was distracting her? She looked up and back to see Jorge. He was shaking his head, throwing off the same hypnotism, but nothing in the group had changed. Fewer than thirty seconds had passed.

Jun said, "And that's why we don't look at the shiny thing. It's got some bizarre properties, to say the least. That should be obvious, right?" His tone was confident. If he had felt the effects, he had seen them coming far enough to fight them off. "Our Relk found it in a partially collapsed cave to the south."

Halsey reached out to touch the object, thought better of it, and retracted her hand. She met Jun's eyes. "Interesting."

Jun said, "So what is it?"

Halsey said, "Put it with the other supplies I set aside on the other side of the stasis field. The question that is important right now is: why did Relk come back?"

Six was reminded immediately of the alien's presence between Jun and Jorge, and Jorge's insistence that he be treated as part of the group. It was eerily similar to when she had first met Halsey, and the woman had taken the data Kat stole with this same dismissive insistence on her own priorities. Halsey could be dangerously focused when she wanted to be. In this instance too, Six felt that she should stand beside Jorge's decision but that there were too many factors involved that she was simply not connected to. She wasn't Relk's keeper.

Jun did not object to the change of subject, instead simply pulling the crystal closer to himself and cupping his hands around its glow.

Relk did object, but only verbally. He started a baffling string of words, none of them understandable. A frenzy of gesturing from Jun, "All right, all right" from Jorge, and an officious "Be quiet!" from Fred shut him up. Relk sighed.

"Someone," said Will, "teach that alien some English."

"I can do it," Halsey said immediately. "But not right now. I need to take care of Kelly."

"And we're in full support of you doing that," Fred said. But Will was right on his heels.

"I'm not sure we're equipped to teach him anything, ma'am. Did your AI have any data on the Covenant language?"

"She had the closest thing in the galaxy to translation software," Halsey said. "But luckily, it is all information that I gathered and passed on to her. I can make a decent start at a pidgin language without Kalmiya, but I need to finish this procedure, and I need to get some sleep first. Jun, put the item over there as I instructed, and do not let it be moved." She looked aside and muttered, "What I wouldn't give for an AI or two."

Six yawned. She couldn't help it and hadn't expected it, but it broadcast over the com. Jorge and Halsey looked at her.

Halsey said, "Give me the time."

Six brought up the optional clock on her HUD. Fred announced the time first, but her own private 4:37 AM made Six feel unexpectedly and intensely disoriented. When had she last slept? When had she last _eaten?_

Spartans could go a long time on a little energy, using strong wills, biofoam, and optimized bodies. But Six hadn't slept in twenty-four hours at least, and hadn't eaten a proper meal in...well, start being picky about the definition of _proper _food and the count went to weeks. She had last eaten MREs with Emile.

She started to feel a bit dizzy.

Doctor Halsey said, "Rest. Assign watches. I'll return soon. If you can, work on translating the alien's speech." She paused. "If you're up to it." Six had never heard her sound so caring. Had she been looking at Fred and Jorge particularly when she had said it? But then Halsey walked back into the stasis field. Six yawned again.

She turned to face Fred as he started giving orders. "We'll sleep in two shifts, and then we'll rotate. Six, Jun, Jorge and Will- you're first. You get six hours and then we'll rotate. You'll get longer shifts later once the rest of my team is rested. The rest of us keep an eye on the entrances and the alien." He stared at Relk. "That's you."

Relk nodded.

Jorge said, "You're putting the threes on rest first."

"Yes I am; also the man with the broken hand. Enjoy it."

Six didn't mind. She followed Jun as he set the alien crystal down on Halsey's crates. Relk sat down next to it, and Fred assigned Vinh to watch him. Six gratefully sat down on the floor beside the others, a few meters away from Relk. The wall was covered with dark, inert versions of the runes that had led them here. Their exact shapes were difficult to make out in the faint, blue light cast by the stasis field. It was closer to them than the main light was.

Will sat down furthest from Six, absorbed in his own unfathomable thoughts. Jun seemed restless, sitting down and then getting up again to retrieve them some food. Jorge went to sleep almost immediately, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his helmet's chin propped against his chest. Six lay down in her armor and spent a few idle moments just watching him, musing on just what about his helmet gave it the bluntly martial appearance and its own sort of personality. Then Jun returning from raiding a crate and cracked open a pack of MREs. He handed a bar and a half each to Six and to Will. The Spartan-II had indeed broken at least two of the fingers on his right hand: one of his teammates had roughly splinted them and bound them together while Six had been looking for Relk and Jun. Will held his right hand stiffly while he ate with his left.

Six sat up, tugged her helmet off, and bit into the food. The bars were dry and chalky, but had never seemed to have so much flavor before. It was hard to swallow, almost feeling unnatural to take such a normal action. She lost track of time for a while as she just enjoyed the simple pleasure of eating. The cave air was unexpectedly cold on her exposed skin.

She looked up when Jun sat down between her and the stasis field. She asked, "Aren't you going to sleep?"

"Sure," he said. "I just have to...look around first." He did, taking in the stasis field, the Spartan-IIs spread out along the cavern walls and entrances, and Relk.

"Scout's instincts, huh?" Six pressed.

"Yeah. And darn well they'd serve us too...if we were somewhere with sky. I don't like the thought of the Elites bearing down on us," Jun said.

"Sure. I don't either."

Jun took another bite of his food. Six did the same. There was companionable silence until the sniper spoke up. "I didn't expect Halsey to be so obviously upset about Kalmiya."

"When she muttered? That didn't seem too obviously upset to me."

"Yeah, but that's as much as you get from Halsey. She's quiet when she's not giving orders, and she...hunkers down. She doesn't give anything away. I could see that she was fraying."

"What did you two do after you left the rest of us?"

"We flew to Castle Base, fought some Covvies on the way. Elites and Jackals had swarmed the place, but we got through. She rendezvoused with the AI like they were real people. I think she really felt something for Kalmiya. AI are like...separate versions of her. Kalmiya talks in her voice, did you notice that? AI are like having extra hands. That's why she wants them back so much."

"Because she feels like they're _her _hands."

"You could say that, Six."

She chewed some more to give a reason for her silence- and because the MREs were like rocks. So Halsey was still, in a way, mourning Kalmiya.

That made the doctor seem a bit more human.

"Okay," said Jun. "I'm taking my nap. See you in the morning."

"Good night."

Six curled up again with her back to the wall, letting the armor suspend her precious inches above the ground. It was designed to serve the human body comfortably for up to two weeks: a cap she felt near hitting. It would be such a relief just to get out of the armor and take a shower. Now, it seemed silly that she had fantasized about doing that very thing in Castle Base. The war just didn't give her the time.

It was nice to have what was left of Noble Team here to talk to, though. They didn't often get to say _good night _to each other; in fact she had hesitated over the right words to use. Usually, Jun or Six took the first watch, being the most comfortable with the sniper scope. When they had been based around Visegrad they had had separate rooms inside the barracks, Six staying with Kat.

Memories of Kat, though, just made her miss the lost members of the team.

Six would have curled up next to Jorge if she didn't think it would wake him up. But that didn't really matter now. She was comfortable and safe, if stuffy inside the armor and a little cold where the cave air was touching her face. She pillowed her head with the softer mesh weave on the palm of her hands.

It didn't take her long to get to sleep.

* * *

Six woke up to a steadily beeping alarm, and Fred standing over her. She pulled her helmet toward her and keyed the alarm with her hand, shutting off the noise. As she stood up, she tucked the helmet under her arm and saluted Fred with the other hand. His yellow visor stared at her, impassive and unreadable, and she wondered whether she was in trouble. Jun, Jorge, and Will were already up and sleepily stretching and walking around the quadrant of the cavern that they had taken over for their rest period. Six said, "Ready for duty, sir."

Her eyes were gummy and her mouth felt dry, but she was, all things considered, ready for duty.

"Relax." In one word, Fred told her that he wasn't going to be keeping to drill sergeant standards. "I'm just making sure everyone has what they need. Your armor has been fully repaired?"

She spared a moment to turn her helmet around and look at it, seeing that the caulk had sunk in and disappeared. "One hundred percent, sir."

"And your leg?"

Six glanced down. She hadn't even thought about her leg wound in some time, but diagnostics came easily. "Armor's still cracked, and I won't be able to repair it without a replacement part. But it hasn't hurt me since I got back from scouting."

Fred nodded. "Good." The word wasn't as friendly as his 'relax'. The green helmet started to take on the martial, animalistic qualities she had earlier associated Jorge's with; she almost expected it to start sniffing, or to part and reveal slavering teeth.

She said, "Awaiting orders, sir."

Fred gathered Jun, Will, and Jorge around him, first giving Will the same sort of checkup interrogation that he had greeted Six with. Then Fred said to Will, "Halsey can set your hand. Kelly's procedure is completely finished. She's only in the stasis field now for recovery. The doctor herself slept a few hours, but now she's back to checking on us. You go see her."

Will also had his helmet under his arm, sparing Six from wondering whether his expression was content. It was. His brown hair was messed, pushed over to one side so that it looked almost like a Jackal's crest. He said, "Not a problem, sir."

Fred gave out more orders before he and most of the Spartan-IIs took their rest. Six and the others filled up their time with consolidating as many items in as few crates as possible, as well as keeping the most useful items accessible. They assisted one another in keeping watch on the four entrances. As she patrolled, Six gradually became more awake. Having time to just rest in muddled thoughts was a luxury. Relk finally fell asleep too, sprawled on the floor near the stasis field in a pose that looked rather uncomfortable. Six spared a glance at him whenever she walked by. The instinct to smack a sleeping Elite on the back of the head was strong. A blow like that could kill a Grunt easily, and could set an Elite up for an assassination with the knife couched against Six's chest.

But Relk was an ally.

After she had woken up fully, Six felt herself start to relax. Her usual optimism manifested as she greeted her teammates.

Even after long travels and dangerous situations, some sleep would do wonders for a Spartan's ability to function normally. Six started to wonder when they would be moving on. Somewhere up above, Elites were still looking for the humans and the crystal that Relk had found...and _those _Elites, she could kill.

Halsey and Will were sitting together, the Spartan's hand bare. The green armor that was usually backing it had been set aside. The black glove underneath had also been removed, leaving tan skin and the bunched-up end of his sleeve. His fingers were bruised blue and red. He set his hand on his knee as Six approached, and took care not to move it. Halsey looked at Six without rancor but didn't welcome her as she sat down.

Six asked, "So. What are you talking about?"

Halsey looked sharply at her, but then her expression softened as if she had an idea that Six could help with. "Teaching the Elite to talk. You Spartans aren't just good soldiers: you're good thinkers. That capacity hasn't been used enough because of the war."

Six thought it was interesting that Halsey said _because of the war_, as if Spartans had some capacity outside it. What would they have been made for in peace time? Mobile, living geniuses on command? Spartans were trained to think clearly and logically. They were also taught mythology, how to analyze stories and conversations, and, to a limited degree, the arts. Solving math and logistics problems was as easy for them as plotting out the best way through a battlefield, but as Halsey had said, the martial arts were used more often.

Halsey said, "I'm going to write down what I know of the Elite grammar and we're going to figure out the rest, with Relk's help. Jorge has experience with teaching English to Reach colonists, and so he should be able to help out as well. I just need to come up with the best method: easy conversations, word games, things like that."

Six nodded. "Sounds good to me."

Halsey said, "It won't just be for fun. We need to find out what that item is that Relk found, and what the Covenant on the surface might be doing."

Six thought, _Halsey thinks I'm in all this for the fun? Okay, I am for part of it. But if we end up in a talk about this..._

But the talk now was about teaching Relk to speak, and so Six sat down and started paying attention to Halsey writing curving, runic figures on the ground with chalk usually used on glass tac boards to augment holographic maps. It scraped and flaked and worked well enough. In a few minutes Jorge joined them, followed by Kelly. Will stood up to help her, but Kelly sat of her own accord. Six couldn't see any of the scars she must have borne under her heavy green armor. The rabbit mark still made her chest plate unique.

With the stasis field powered down now that Kelly was no longer in it, the light they had was the bright white of the emergency light that had been set up near the main entrance to the cavern. While the Spartan-IIs rested, Six and the alert members of Red Team started translating words into English from Sangheili.


	21. Pidgin Sangheili

Author's Note: You probably already noticed that this chapter is massive compared to the others. That's because I'm enrolled in the **Wordswithout **school of dialogue and characterization. She's teaching me to make people sound like people, while I try to make sure they still sound like supersoldiers.

This story has become more and more important in my life lately, not least because it's become such a large undertaking. I'm very invested in it and I'd like to thank the people who have helped out by reviewing and just being there, **SurferSquid **especially.

Also, the rest of the chapters now have titles just so that this one could have the title it does.

* * *

**XXI**

Halsey sat back on her heels. She hunched, as if to settle further into her white, puffy parka. The air was the exact same temperature it had been when Six had fallen asleep: a damp, pure coolness. Six remembered learning that there were two kinds of caves: those that were alive and those that were finished. If they were alive, water was still flowing. It was still shaping the rocks. Caves like that were more dangerous to walk into: something in the process of forming could break off with the application of the right pressure or a chance movement of the tons of rock surrounding each precariously empty room. Live caves needed to be monitored. They moved.

Dormant caves had finished growing. The water or other forces that had formed them had gone elsewhere. They were settled comfortably into their places and would not change at all unless something drastic forced the rocks to shift. This kind of cave was safer to travel in, although without ecosystems involving mostly mushrooms, salamanders, and blind, wandering fish they would also be harder to survive in unaided.

That was a moot point, though. The human body could not live off the careful, slow reserves of lightless energy used by the things in caves.

The cave the Sangheili had tattooed with their runes was dormant.

The air still felt cold in a way that reminded Six of water.

The few symbols that Halsey had drawn on the ground still waited there. Six crossed her legs and sat down, creating a lose circle around the runes with Jorge and Fred on either side of her. They were towering, and even next to Six Halsey looked tiny. Six thought that the doctor had looked stronger, more solid, when she'd imperiously handed Six the AI to be carried to the _Pillar of Autumn._

Six wondered whether Halsey was hiding how strongly she missed that AI too. At least Cortana was still alive...probably.

If Halsey felt any regret about losing her AI, though, she wasn't showing it now. She continued to explain the runes. "These symbols are similar to the ones on the walls, but not a part of the same alphabet. From information I've gotten off of Sangheili armor and the dashboards I get pictures of when you Spartans capture Covenant vehicles, we can see that there is a modern version of the language used in the Elites' conversations, along with a ritual language used on the armor and buildings they consider sacred. Because this is the one group of people I'm sure ONI could not infiltrate I can also tell you that I have seen symbols like this before. I was sent an image of a hologram: it's where I saw these symbols." She pointed to the circles and curls on the ground. "It was some kind of object from an alien species that predates the Covenant, and it is the latchkey discovery I told Noble Team about. The object that Relk found might be a component of this artifact."

So this was why Noble Team had had their fight in the snowy, kilometers-deep sinkhole underneath Reach's surface. Halsey hadn't wanted to explain what it was she was doing down there, but it seemed like the circumstances had changed. Halsey didn't want to be like ONI, leading everyone else on blindly.

That was preferable.

Six could clearly imagine Halsey using this same tone of voice and diction in a lecture hall to teach the Spartan-IIs. Kurt and Mendez had left the most of the threes' classroom work to dumb AI and computers. Jorge would have had a completely different experience from her, growing up with Halsey. She wanted to ask him what it had been like, and whether he ever thought that the threes were missing something because they hadn't had Halsey there, but it wasn't something she knew how to start to talk about.

Thinking about Jorge and reconsidering the mention of sacred places jarred something in her memory. "They burned a mark like this into the surface of the planet," she said. "We walked past it right after Relk turned on us for the first time."

Jorge nodded, his face set in a grim expression. "They left this big glass shape on the plains north of the shipyard."

Halsey said, "That makes sense."

_It's horrible..._Six thought, _but it makes sense._

Halsey continued. "That language is like Greek would be to us, or even Sanskrit. It's a mark of something being old. That's why Relk couldn't help up to read it. It's also why this doesn't help us communicate with him, even though it is our area of expertise, if we can even be said to have one in xenolinguistics. I believe that all the spoken Covenant languages are written like this, although the different species have different spoken words. Jorge, what did you learn about the Sangheili while you were traveling with Relk?"

"Ma'am, I have portions of the trip recorded. Do we have something to play them back on?"

"Yes." Halsey stood up. "That would be invaluable."

She went to her equipment and retrieved a small holographic tablet and a thick cord. Jorge handed his helmet to her and she hooked its data port to the tablet, leaving the helmet sitting on the ground next to the runes and looking like it had sprouted a tail.

Jorge said, "They were mostly made so that I could get an idea of the area, but Relk sometimes talked about things, and pointed them out."

"Good." Halsey began extracting images of landscapes. Six could see her screen change, but would have had to crane her neck intrusively to get a clearer view. The trees and mountains she could see were yellow-cast from the screen, and frustratingly lacking in detail. How alien were they, really? Just how far had Jorge travelled away from her?

Jorge kept looking at Halsey, but he did give Six some of the explanation she wanted. "We stayed in the woods, avoiding houses. It didn't seem like a very developed part of the planet. Good farmland." He leaned forward, armor shifting. "Relk seemed to talk a lot about the farmers."

Halsey said, "Building a vocabulary from these words might be the best way to teach him. Simple word games and matching what he says to what we say will build the ways we can communicate."

The four of them leaned closer as the video played, including tinny sound. Jorge would occasionally comment giving context, explaining how in one situation Relk had seemed to be naming a direction, and in another warning that Elites were passing nearby. Six saw purple-leaved bushes with thick leaves and green veins crowding narrow paths made of tiny, raked, tan pebbles.

Halsey said, "There, he obviously said 'Sangheili'."

It was garbled but recognizable. The elite language had as many honks and growls as syllables that could be translated directly into English.

After half an hour they had a decent list of nouns and verbs that Relk had said and that could be scraped out on the dirt in English characters. Halsey sat back again, finally moving from what had looked like an uncomfortable crouch. She sat down and wiped her dusty hands on her pants. "The most important things to know are the nouns and verbs. We can speak in pidgin Sangheili if we have to. The grammar will be beyond us for now, but basic forms can be communicated on the battlefield just as well."

Jorge said, "I don't expect we'll be fighting beside him."

"Nah," Jun said. "It's Relk. You can't fight beside him without running away."

Six glanced over at the sleeping Elite. The Spartans' words were joking, as if they were talking about a younger brother.

Halsey didn't seem to notice the joke. Her eyes were icy behind her glasses. "We need communication. The artifact he found is the key to everything on this planet, and the only way to properly study it is to get back to civilization, past whatever army is waiting for us. It is even more imperative now that we get out of here quickly...and preferably safely. This work is a basis for doing that. Now, go wake up the Elite."

They all stood up. Jorge stretched, managing to look as if deciphering alien languages had been the most relaxing thing in the world. Jun still had the long, spindly sniper rifle magnetized to his back: he touched it with one hand as if to make sure it was still there while he helped Halsey up with the other hand. Six headed toward the awkwardly draped form of Relk. She wasn't a huge fan of the idea of waking a sleeping Elite; at least, not with a knife in her hand. The last time she'd assassinated one had been right on the edge of a cliff, on a mission that Noble Team had completed almost silently. She still remembered the green of the grass and the blue of the sky, shadowed by early-morning darkness.

As it turned out, she didn't have to dissipate that memory to wake Relk up. He must have been a light sleeper. He sat up as the humans approached, eyes fixing on Six's uncovered face. His mouthparts opened wide to show pink skin; strange, thin rows of pointed teeth; and stretching membranes between the four jawbones. He had no tongue.

A moment later, though, the mouthparts rearranged and settled into the familiar, gray, much less toothy Relk expression that Six was used to. He muttered.

Jorge moved to stand beside Six and looked up at Relk. "We're gonna teach you some things."

Relk said, "What?"

Into the surprised silence Jun said, "Right. He already knows that one."

* * *

Vinh found Kelly sitting on a crate, caulking her armor. Her chest plates looked normal, hiding the nearly fatal damage beneath. One gauntlet, though, had developed a crack. Kelly carefully filled in the ruptures with the caulk tube held in her right hand. Her red hair was spiky and uneven, and her forehead sweaty, but her face and lips had healthy color. Vinh kept her own helmet on. Her hair, black and slightly longer than Kelly's, was comfortably flattened and tucked against her neck. She had parted it and tied it into two separate tails at the back to let her armor and her AI port touch and communicate. She didn't currently have an AI, and had not in fact been cleared for the end-stage modifications she would need to run one. But still, the port helped her armor read her vital signs. It was protected with soft docking points, but getting hair involved with the electronics could still produce some pretty noticeable shocks. Parting the hair around it was a much better idea.

She wanted to keep the helmet on to be sure no Covenant crept down the hallways without anyone being able to pick it up on their radar. Jorge and the threes took their helmets off so often she wasn't sure why they'd been issued any, and the rest of the team was still asleep. Someone had to be alert.

Vinh, though, had woken up worried about Kelly. Her own injuries had been patched: fingers wrapped by Will when he was done with his own, but she still ached. Kelly had it worse. Now she stood in front of the older woman with her arms crossed and stared down the thick, green jaw plates of her helmet. "How are you feeling?"

Kelly's expression was all business. "Like I've been turned inside out."

"Your voice..."

"Won't be this tiny forever. Doctor Halsey says I'll have it back in a few days." Kelly set the caulk down beside her leg.

"It can't be worse than the augmentations."

"That was a long time ago, Vinh. It's weird in a completely different way to know that Halsey dropped your lung in a hallway somewhere so it wouldn't attract animals."

"Ugh."

"But I'm still alive." She shrugged.

"Are you ready to fight?"

"I will be soon."

Vinh looked toward the group of people talking on the other side of the cave. She had skirted them before coming over here. "They're trying to speak Elite. You think that'll help?"

"Maybe."

"We should be moving on. If, I mean, if you can."

"Halsey will tell us when it's time."

"She doesn't seem too concerned with the troops above our heads."

"You've always been ready to jump into things," Kelly said matter-of-factly.

Arguing felt very natural to Vinh. They were trapped in a cave while aliens invaded the planet. There weren't many ways to make that better, so she might as well make it worse. She sighed. "That's just because we have a _war to win_."

"You think we can't deal with them?" Kelly's tone was perfectly even. Her voice was quiet and tired, but that didn't make it any less conversational.

Vinh was taken aback. Kelly had noticed that she was probing for answers, and for cracks in morale. She had come over because she was concerned, but it was hard to stay that way when Kelly was her old untouchable self. Vinh liked walls to push against. "We dealt with them on Mestopheles. We dealt with them on Harbor. _I _dealt with them just like any of your teams did, and I know _exactly _what I'm dealing with here. I'm just not sure _you _do." Her voice was growing louder, more growly as the speakers dealt with it.

Vinh wondered why she'd worried.

Kelly stood up. She was three hundred pounds of near-silence in the pine-green MJOLNIR armor still dusted with Reach dirt and Reach underground. She was slightly taller than Vinh, her shoulders the same width down to the half inch.

Kelly said, "When I said you were always ready to jump into things, I meant things like _this_. Don't try to argue me down, Vinh."

Vinh looked around, unconsciously judging how much room she had to move in. Kelly tipped her head. She was doing the same thing.

Vinh said, "Obviously you're feeling better. So now I don't have to care any more."

Kelly picked up the caulk. She sat down and started ministering to her arm again, conveying more uncaring than Vinh could manage.

Vinh glanced over at Isaac, her usual conversation partner. He never minded when she argued. He just shrugged it off like his armor was made to repel it. He didn't even have to try to laugh it off like Will did.

Isaac treated Vinh's anger like Kelly treated her own pain.

He was asleep now, propped up against the wall.

Vinh headed for the group of people sitting with the Elite.

* * *

Jorge sat down beside Relk. He looked comfortable, giving the cave a warmth that Six would never have expected to find.

Then Halsey sat down on the other side of Relk, folding her knees beneath her in a way that Six's armor made impossible. Halsey turned the holographic tablet around to show it to Relk.

Six, Fred, and Jun sat down as well. Moving aside to let Fred complete the circle, Six's knee brushed against Jorge's; she left it there.

Relk looked nervously between the five of them, jaws parting in and out as he breathed. His eyes got wide like a human's did when he was nervous, the universal adaptation to fear being desire to see and understand more of it. Halsey held the tablet close enough to him that it glowed against his face.

"I need you to name things," she said. She spoke slowly and clearly, but that wasn't unusual for her. Part of the difficulty of dealing with Halsey was that she always sounded a bit like she doubted your skills in English. "Items, places...any of this." She reached across and paused the video.

Relk did not repeat his "What." At first he was hesitant, but as Halsey did not interrupt him he caught on quickly, pointing to things in the image and naming them. Six had trouble thinking of him as anything besides an animal, but Jun had suggested that Relk had also understood the need for communication on their small mission together. In their circle, the Spartans leaned closer to see what Relk was indicating.

One claw tapped the screen. "Aowha."

Halsey pointed as well. "Tree."

Relk pointed out other objects-fences, the path- while Halsey repeated them in English. Jorge was trying to pronounce the alien words; Six could see his mouth moving.

Once he and Halsey were playing the video forward and exchanging words at a brisk rate, Relk grew more enthusiastic and starting pointing to things outside the screen. Halsey tried to keep up by taking the computer back and recording the words. She started asking him to slow down, getting him to repeat things instead of going on to more so that the vocabulary could settle in. Relk started adding words, saying 'zhe' at the beginning of each sentence.

Halsey said, "What does that mean? Zhe?"

Relk repeated, "Zhe aowha."

"That's the 'to be' verb, isn't it? It means...that's what the word is?"

"Is," Relk said. He nodded, and slowly babbled something with a 'zhe' in it. "Is."

"That could be the 'to be' verb." Halsey seemed to gain energy just by suggesting it. "Zhe Relk?"

Relk nodded.

Halsey actually smiled. It was like a glacier cracking. "This is invaluable."

Six looked aside as Fred spoke. "We should teach him more useful words: commands and things like that."

Halsey said, "I am afraid it's a little too early for that. We barely know the sentence structure. We have established that verbs usually begin sentences, and are placed before their objects like in English."

"Got that from our recordings, did you?" Jorge asked.

"Yes, and the few that ONI shared."

"The Elites say 'wort' a lot. That means 'move', or something like. He used it enough to get us off roads or out of cover."

His voice going quiet, as if he were ashamed, Relk said, "Wort."

"Mo-oo-ve," Jun said, drawing out the sounds. He mimed walking with his fingers.

Relk opened his mouth, jaw working through the sound. "_Muuuve_."

"There we go," Jun grinned. Six stayed silent, watching.

Jorge said, "We heard that word on Reach too, but it's not just used in battle. We did a lot of moving in forests, trying to avoid places with people in them. He'd use that as a warning."

Six's gaze drifted even farther toward the floor, but she wrenched it back and looked between Jorge and Relk. This was why she hadn't been able to meet Jorge's eyes yet. She'd missed things, hadn't been there for so many alien afternoons, and all she could see now was the video on the screen, tinted so yellow that she couldn't tell what color the light must have really been...

Fred said, "Okay, that's a step. What else can we do?"

Halsey was also shaking her head as she entered the word into the computer. "It is going to take a lot of practice, but this is a good start."

"I just think we should do more."

Jorge _hunched_. He bowed his head so his shoulder armor almost arced like the side of his helmet. It wasn't a look of shame, either- it was a preparation. "Don't push it. He'll come around."

Six sat up. "He's not _pushing it."_ She realized she was gritting her teeth and reined back, far more comfortable making peace out of the situation than making it worse...although she still hackled._ "_We haven't been working that long. We can do some more." She shrugged. The idea was to end her snappish statement on a cheerier note, but the shrug ended up brushing off more than the difficulty of the language.

Jorge was not diverted. He was still somewhere in those unnaturally-colored trees. "It took me a lot of patience to figure out what I did. Howabout you, Relk? Do you want to go on?"

They all looked at Relk. Six watched Halsey watch him; the happiness had gone, and her expression was all shrewdness now. The Elite shrugged.

Footsteps sounded across the cavern. The Spartans looked up. Craning her neck around Fred's shoulder, Six could see that Vinh had simply woken up and walked over to Kelly. Halsey reacted a moment later, following their gazes before returning to the center of the circle.

The language lesson progressed quickly after that. Jorge and Halsey grew more adept at explaining to Relk in pidgin Sangheili and a smattering of English what he should be focusing on. Relk learned to cough out the English for left and right. He had picked up the habit of nodding and bobbing his head for yes and no. Fred taught him to say the humans' names, which Relk managed with some struggle. Fred introduced Six to him as Aislinn, which at first she begrudged, but Relk had been having a lot of trouble with the X.

The near-struggle near the medical supplies did not go unnoticed, but when it was finished Vinh turned and stalked toward the group. Any response one of them had been going to make had not counted on the angry glint as she violently sat down with them, stopping her momentum like a plane crashlanding. She was silent except for the slight clunk of her armor as sat down beside them, Relk was still pointing around the cave and trying to convey the Sangheili words for things like 'rock' and 'ceiling', seemingly oblivious to Vinh's attitude.

Six met her eyes for a moment, testing to see whether she would do anything. She didn't know Vinh very well, but the other woman had been quiet to the point of being curt. Her adding to the tension was not on the list of things that Six needed right now.

Vinh kept quiet, though, stewing in thoughts that were unrelated to the ones that made Six angry. Six was almost hyper-aware of how she and Jorge were still touching, their knees occasionally shifting.

It was much easier to use English as the intermediary language rather than Relk's. The alien language required hots, growls, and bubbling noises that the human mouth just couldn't always manage. Relk could produce a rather garbled English if he kept the back of his jaws from opening out too much, but when Six tried the Elite's word for 'weapon' (or 'armed'-they could only be so specific by pointing), it didn't work so well. The word had a yelp at the end; Halsey wrote it down as 'ka-Y'. When Six tried to say it, the yelp came out as something like a coo. Jun laughed so fast that she could hear him trying to catch up and stop it. She couldn't help curving her own expression into a smile and laughed too, and the sound of both of them set off echoes around the cave. Relk opened his mouth and chuffed.

Six thought, _This isn't so bad._

Vinh said, "How is this helping?"

The laughter died out. Halsey looked up. "We have discussed this in detail. We need to learn more about these caves and what they contain. Relk can help."

"Are you sure he's helping?"

"He's given us a decent vocabulary."

"But he already ran away from us once. Maybe the crystal is a tracking device, and he's just getting information to bring back to his troops on the surface." Then she seemed to notice Fred looking at her, and lowered her masked gaze." Stiffly she said, "I just think we should be moving on. For all we know, he'll lead his teammates right here. Kelly's ready to go."

"The rest of _your _teammates are not," Halsey said. Her voice was very flat as she craned her neck to try to meet Vinh's eyes. "I suggest you get your rest too. Even Spartans can have flaws in their judgement without enough rest." She looked down, disinterested with the politicking, ready to resume the language lesson.

Jorge interrupted, sounding angry. "I trust Relk. Who here doesn't? "

There was a challenge there, drawn out and growled. She was pretty sure that the last time she'd heard him like this was an argument with Emile. Here, then, were the lines being drawn in the sand: here was Jorge demanding loyalty, from the others but especially from her. And yet she still didn't quite trust Relk. She hadn't known him as long as Jorge had; she hadn't been in the pictures he'd recorded. Fred, the only other object of his anger, was silent.

"I don't," Vinh said, cutting through the silence with her usual bluntness. "It's part of my job description not to trust them. Yours too, by the way."

"I don't need to be told what my job is. I know what I'm doing and I know where to put my faith." Jorge had gone back to sounding almost good-humored, but the implication stood. _Some of us know who belongs. Some of us don't._

Six looked at Vinh to see her reaction. The mask didn't give anything away.

In the end it was Halsey who broke the stalemate. "Trust is irrelevant," she said curtly. "We need to learn. Vocabulary like this is a start, and conversations and simple word games will do the rest, or as much as we can under the circumstances."

Jun said, delighted, "We get to play games?" He was roundly ignored, but some of the tension broke. Six felt it rippling outwards from her shoulders, lifting off from the armor that was as much a second skin as inorganic protection.

"We should, though, move out as soon as the rest of Red Team is rested," Halsey decided. It was the unofficial end of the day's language lesson, and seemed to placate Vinh.

Relk said, "What?" This word was serving him well.

Jun was more patient and obliging to him than Six expected. "Leaving." He gestured toward the nearest tunnel.

Relk chuffed.

Jorge got up, scooping up his helmet from where Halsey had disconnected it from the computer, and headed toward the crates he had brought. Six jobbed a few steps to catch up to him. "How can you be sure?" She asked quietly. "How do you know he's not going to betray us?"

"He had a lot of time to do that while we were out there." He gestured as if to indicate Reach's surface, the Covenant worlds-everywhere except the cave.

"The first time I saw him he was ordering your death," Six said.

"Look at him now."

She looked back at where they had been sitting. Relk was still standing next to Jun and Halsey, working out words. Vinh, predatory and heavy in her mask, looked at Six. The tension was back in both their shoulders, the invisible hackling as they stood there. Jorge wasn't quite glaring, he was too open for such narrow expressions, but it was close. So close. Six had upset him with a single question and yet there were still more to be asked. Why were the words humming uselessly at the back of her throat?

_I'm allowed to demand these answers. It is my _right.

She said, in a voice too small to be hers, "Would I get it if I'd been with you after the Solace?"

They had reached the crates. He turned to her, cradling his helmet under his arm like she held hers. Mirror images, both of them: exact but opposed. "I'm not so good with words," Jorge said. "But, even if you weren't there...trust me."

She sighed, trying for laughter. It had worked for Jun, but it didn't take any of the small out of her voice. "Is there a certain kind of trust you get from agreeing to try to kill one another occasionally?"

Jorge said, "I suppose there was, but I think we're done with that."

He sounded very serious.

Six sighed again. She couldn't name her unease well enough to talk about it. There was, at least, faith to be found in Jorge if not Relk, but even that felt like unsure footing right now.

"Trust me on this," Jorge said again, drawing his lines. "Alright?"

Six nodded.


	22. Tremors

**XXII**

Ten sets of footsteps filled up the small, rune-lined passageway. The Spartans needed to walk two abreast or in file, although the passage was tall enough that none of them had to stoop. They were engineered to be big because Covenant species tended to be that way naturally, and the ones that had built this hallway seemed to have been no exception. Six was walking beside Jun, closest to Halsey. Relk and most of the Spartan-IIs were behind them, while Fred had point. The cave gradually narrowed, then widened out again into a flat passageway that still didn't admit more than two people at a time. The cave was so silent that Six started straining to hear something in the emptiness behind the footsteps and the breaths of her companions. The rocks overhead seemed to arch and hide shadows in crevasses, even though the thin, green light of her night vision lit them up as well as possible. Six found herself drifting toward Halsey, and casting around for something to talk about to break the silence.

"How are we doing on food supply?" She asked. Her stomach was starting to feel empty. Six, Jorge, and Jun had nearly gone through their supply of MREs as they walked across the blasted plains aboveground. The chalky, easily-transported nutrient bars were calorie-rich and easy to snap apart and share, but tasted bland and clung to the tongue.

Halsey seemed to have had the same experience. "We have enough between us for a week of meals if we ration them carefully. We need to eat regularly, especially since we aren't getting sunlight. MREs are very useful and will provide us with the nutrients we need...even if they are tasteless."

"We could make them last longer than that, if we eat a little at a time."

"You could." Halsey sighed, sounding older and more vulnerably human than she had before. "I don't have the metabolism of a Spartan. At some point, I'm going to have to eat or I'll start to feel it."

Six wondered what Halsey thought her legendary brain would be needed for down here, when Relk was becoming the one who tended to translate the alien symbols. As much as she disliked the patronizing way the doctor talked to her, though, she couldn't stand the thought of any member of the group suffering quietly just because she hadn't been given augmentations as a child. She asked, "Did the UNSC leave caches down here? We could send a party back to get something from the tunnels the humans made."

Halsey shook her head. "The rockslide cut us off from the only parts of the cave that the troops ever used."

Even thinking about food made Six more aware of the empty feeling in her stomach. Food, or lack thereof, hadn't really affected her performance since she was ten. Spartans were efficient machines that wore down slowly. However, it was with a discomforting feeling that she might regret it later that she said, "We'll make keeping you healthy a priority."

Halsey kept walking, looking straight ahead. Her white hair framed and partially hid the lines on her face.

For a moment, the only sounds were footsteps and Spartans talking quietly in the back of the group. Six kept pace with Halsey, not liking the conversation to end on such a low note. "I mean, it'd be different if we were supplied with steaks or something. Then I might not be so generous."

Halsey's lips quirked. Six mentally assigned herself another point on the 'getting Halsey to smile' scale. She was at one and a half.

Halsey said, "Ah yes, I forget sometimes that they allotted you a sense of humor." Six smiled.

Jun moved up beside them. "MREs taste like crumbly cardboard, but they're gonna keep us alive, right, Six?"

She started to answer, but Halsey did exactly what Six had hoped this conversation would accomplish. The doctor opened up enough to have an opinion. "It wouldn't be so bad if I just had some coffee."

"Reach is a bit lacking," Jun drawled.

"I should've gotten used to your sense of humor long ago." Halsey faced him. "I told you that this planet couldn't grow decent coffee even if you drop Earth soil down on it."

"It grow lots of things people can cook with. That doesn't happen to be one of them," Jun said.

"We'll get you the best if you we find any, ma'am," Six said. She knew Halsey couldn't see her smile behind the mask, so she tried to show it in her voice.

She wasn't gaining any more points easily, though. Halsey ignored her and instead spoke to Jun. She didn't risk not seeing what was in front of her to look to the side and meet his eyes, but instead locked gazes with the beam of his headlamp, shining over Fred's shoulder. "Jun, are you getting along with the alien?"

"Um, yes m'am."

"Why don't you go keep up with him like you're supposed to."

"Um, yes m'am." Jun nodded, making the light bounce. He sped up to match paces with Relk, and left Halsey and Six relatively alone in the middle of the group. Six looked down at the doctor, wondering if she'd caught on to the way Six was studying her reactions.

Halsey said, "Do you remember when we talked about slow emotions?"

"Yes." Six said. She still associated that conversation with the little prickling pain as she got her stitches put in. "That was in the medical center."

"Do you think you're still feeling the same way now?"

Six thought about the fight with the Elites after they'd fled the medical suite, and the rockslide. Those had been intense battles, but they were like any other battles, and filled with quick emotion centered on her own survival. It hadn't really been battle that Halsey had been talking about when they'd discussed slow emotion, though. It had been the way Six reacted to people, and how she formed attachments to them in ways that other Spartans did not. Even Noble Team had left the memories of Thom behind, or sequestered in a secure place that they rarely talked about. Six couldn't act like she didn't know who Halsey was talking about. The doctor was closest with Jorge out of any of the Nobles, and maybe out of any of the Spartan-IIs that Six had seen so far. Now, Jorge was walking behind them, calmly talking to Will. Thinking about Six's last talk with him left her with a curling feeling in her stomach in the way lack of food had failed to, a spine-deep lack that left her feeling worn. Maybe Halsey had pinpointed that.

But she couldn't let Halsey know how much it affected her. She hadn't needed to explain in the medical suite, and so she didn't now.

She said, "Yes, I am," but kept her tone light, as if it didn't matter.

"And don't you use humor as a defense?" Halsey countered.

Six didn't have to consider her answer for long. This was a basic truth. "No." She hid things, but not behind humor. Maybe Jun did that, and therefore his humor had more of a bite to it, a cynical sadness that came out in his voice and the occasional sarcastic And I was just getting lonely.

Halsey looked straight at her. It was like taking off a mask. Honesty showed on her face. "From almost anyone else, I wouldn't believe that."

Six couldn't help but dip her gaze away from the older woman's glass-shrouded eyes. "I try to keep positive."

The cave walls slid by. Halsey said, "You could have been artists, you know. If we'd just changed the curriculum a little you could have been an army of the greatest visionary minds of the century, Einsteins instead of Leonidas. But that's not what the funding was for." The end of the sentence came out derisive, even the hurried, contracted words showing that she wanted to rush away from the very concept of something that could have been and wasn't.

Six said, "We do our jobs, m'am."

"Yes you do. You do them well."

Six nodded as a thank you. It was a rare compliment from Halsey. The doctor looked away and continued walking, and it was like someone had taken a spotlight off of Six. She wasn't used to working with someone who had such intent eyes. She was content to stay out of the limelight for now.

* * *

Will was a generally positive person. Like many Spartans, he just didn't have the capacity to let emotions like fear and sadness weigh him down. Also, it was hard to be sad or frightened when you'd recently been gifted with a brand-new rocket launcher.

The freshly unwrapped ordinance from Halsey's stash meant that Will was carrying the most powerful weapon in the group, even counting Jorge in front of him, who seemed to have torn a turret gun off a tripod at some point and just never saw the need to put it down. Jorge had changed his armor too, certainly not to look like the smaller Spartan-IIIs but maybe to emulate the way they customized themselves. Will kept the rocket launcher magnetized to his back, the gel between the cloth undersuit and the heavy armor making the MJOLNIR take the weight off his body.

He tried to broach a conversation as they walked along the passageway. "What's it been like working with this...what are they called, Noble Team?"

Jorge's insistent response ignored Will's stumbling over the name. Jorge kept the team so close that he didn't need to name it. "It was great. We got as close as if we'd been raised together. I mean, it was different from being with all of you, and I wondered where you were. But even as I got closer to Noble...we lost good people."

"They lost you too."

Jorge shook his head. "That isn't as important."

Will couldn't help but feel a pang of possessiveness. Jorge being loyal to the threes was...a problem none of the Spartan-IIs had had before. "Red Team lost people too."

"I know. How many did they send to Reach?"

"Hundreds. We jumped down into a hot zone. Not fun. The aliens had already set up camp. I don't know how they brought fortifications and vehicles down so fast."

"I don't either, but Six saw it first hand. A whole fleet jumped in while I was in Elite space. She was the closest human to the front when the Covenant arrived."

"You were on an alien planet. I bet ONI would have fun with that one."

"They won't know."

"How long were you out there?"

"Ten days."

"And you got the information Halsey's using to teach Relk to speak, right? Didn't do any damage while you were there?" Will did not like the idea of being the only human on a whole hostile planet. He'd have an itchy trigger finger no matter what weapon he was carrying.

"It was civilian territory," Jorge said.

Will gave one uncontrolled laugh. "So was most of Reach."

Jorge looked down at him past the bulky shoulder guard. Will wondered what had caused Jorge to want to add more layers to his armor, besides it being a very Spartan-III trait. He wanted defense. Six and Jun exhibited the same quirk of adding their personality to their armor, Jun wearing camouflage mesh around his shoulders and Six's relatively svelte armor showing muddy orange even in the dim light. Jorge said, "We passed houses a couple times, just got close enough to see the light. They weren't all that different from homes here. Maybe as different as someone from America and someone from Europe."

"Aright, I guess pacifism worked well enough for you. You survived."

"It feels strange sometimes, Will, I understand that. Even I wondered if it's right, but...it feels right. Halsey told me I feel slowly. That's when I was talking to her from Reach, a long time ago, through slightly...encoded channels."

That surprised Will. What would Jorge not want to say in public? And besides, the UNSC kept meticulous records, but if you wanted to use the radio to get to somebody, you'd run into their security measures. Other team members didn't necessarily have to know about calls, only superior officers. There was only one group that a Spartan would really have to try to avoid. "You were hiding from ONI?"

"I was trying."

"That's dangerous. ONI's got spies everywhere."

"Not among Spartans."

"I dunno. I guess they couldn't." The Office of Naval Intelligence hid in a lot of places, among civilians and officers alike, but Will realized that it would be unlikely they could corrupt a Spartan. And it would be corruption, not just orders. The UNSC marines tolerated ONI and tried to forget it existed. Meanwhile, ONI agents could and had been known to make individual soldiers seem to never have existed.

Jorge said, "They couldn't convince a Spartan. I needed to talk to her."

Will sighed. "You're an idealist, man. Do you think ODSTs are people too?"

"Yes."

Will laughed. Somebody had to. Jorge was so serious about his idealism that he didn't crack a smile. He didn't seem hurt either; just far away. Will thought that things could get scary when idealists got guns. Sometimes they used them on people you didn't expect. Sometimes, they didn't use them at all, and that could be one _loud_ silence.

Will followed Jorge's gaze to Six and Halsey ahead of them. Jorge had seemed to want to steer the conversation to one of them. "Is Aislinn a pacifist too? She doesn't seem to like the alien."

"I'm not a pacifist. I just try to be reasonable. Six didn't see what I did." He paused, then changed to the topic to something Will might find more palatable. "Did you know she's rated hyper-lethal?"

"Really? How'd she get that without leading a team?"

"I don't really know. I'll ask her when I talk to her about Relk."

"You're planning to talk to her about Relk?" That didn't seem to be something one would need to make an appointment for. And here again was his strange focus on what point of view Six saw from. Very few of the others liked Relk either. Was Jorge going to talk to them all?

"Maybe to apologize. We disagree, and we ought to work it out."

Fred didn't think that two people disagreeing mattered all that much. Normally, Spartans teams weren't in such close quarters. It didn't matter as much then. The teams were closeted now, and rivalries were coming to the surface. Kelly and Vinh had never been friends, for example, but that didn't mean they were enemies who were going to attack each other instead of the Covenant. "Do you think it's going to be all that disadvantageous to disagree on one thing?"

Jorge thought for a moment before responding. "I want my team to get along better than Kelly and Vinh do."

"It doesn't affect our progress-"

"I think Spartan-IIs forget what they are sometimes," Jorge growled. Up until now their voices had been level, but now there was a roughness in Jorge's voice that reminded Will of when Fred wanted something done, now, no questions. There was authority in that voice. It was an immediate, skin-tearing tug on the chain of command.

For Spartans, trained for solidarity and situational awareness, a tone like that was like a warning light going off.

Will said, "I didn't mean anything by it."

"It's fine," Jorge said. As if proving his own point, he sounded sincere.

* * *

They stopped to rest at an elbow curve where the cave widened out, miles from where they had started. The Covenant, though, were still digging for them. Almost as soon as the last Spartan stood still the cave shook, a surrounding earthquake that made pebbles jump and a boulder-sized shelf of ceiling slide and crash to the floor two meters from where Six sat. Its nine-foot-high surface was eerily clear-cut except at the ragged edges where something seemed to have chewed into the rock. The Spartans went on alert, Six and Jun surrounding Halsey as fast as they could get to their feet. Jorge felt for Kelly behind him as he moved a few steps toward the fall. The doctor simply looked at the fall as if prepared to write its dimensions on her clipboard. Relk said, very quietly, "Enemy."

After that, the earth stopped shaking. Fred and Halsey agreed to move the team further into the cave. Red Team continued on a sullen, nervous journey. The path began to slope inevitably downward and the ceiling to take on a darker, shinier tone, as if the ones who had built the path had needed to divert it through softer, more malleable rock. Six reached up to brush against the onyx surface, but the only thing she could feel was the slight give of the cloth and the gel layer against her fingertips. The walls shook again, less violently this time, like an animal shaking off flies.

It was an uneasy progression that felt like a retreat until Halsey called for another halt. The cave had leveled out, although veins of the black, onyx-like rock still punctuated the walls like curtains covering rougher, grayer sections. In this elbow turn, a Banshee-sized section of the floor had been scooped out by water collecting long ago It left a shallowly sloped room with two entrances and a forest of impenetrably small, artfully random fissures in the back.

Halsey's voice was quiet as she saw down on the lip of the rock bowl. "Let's try to rest here."

The Spartans put down their equipment, jostling and debating n the small space as they decided where best to place the boxes so that they wouldn't block the entrances or get underfoot. Since Six hadn't been assigned to carry anything this time, she gravitated toward the back of the little room and perched at the far side of the bowl. She leaned her elbows on her knees and felt her eyes drift toward closed, blurring her green-tinted vision.

"Aislinn, Jorge."

Six perked up at the sound of her name. Fred continued talking even as she headed toward him, nearly brushing past Vinh and Relk on the way.

Fred said, "I want you two on guard duty, on the right and the left passages. I don't care who takes which one."

"Yes sir." Jorge moved over to the right and stood there, resting the turret gun against his right foot. Six moved past Fred to the left and looked down the path they hadn't yet taken. She was only a few feet from Jorge, separated by a flat outjut of rock. She could talk to him easily from here, but what would she say? Even the false-color reflections on his visor started the aching feeling that had haunted her since the Solace.

She requested a private channel. He picked up with the clicking sound of the external speakers shutting off, but didn't actually say anything yet. Behind her, Six could hear the others talking. Relk was trying out words, while Jun occasionally gave a "Mm-hmm" of acknowledgement and the least attention.

Six said, "Do you ever not know what to say, but want to say it as loudly and passionately as possible?"

Jorge shifted his grip and his balance, the butt of the gun leaning against the floor. "I can't say I have. But that's who you are, Six. You say whatever you're going to say, passionately. I like that about you."

Heat was probably coloring her cheeks. She wanted to cross her arms, to contradict the openness she couldn't keep out of her voice, but Fred had said they need to stand at ready. Besides, some openness was what had gotten her friendships with Noble Team to start with.

So, it was with openness and kindness copied from his tone that she said, "I've been keeping things from you lately."

Jorge was looking down the path they had come from, but he spared a slow glance for her. "What do you want to tell me?"

She looked back at him for a moment before leveling her gaze down the hallway she had been set to guard. "I don't like that we disagree about Relk. Are we going to...agree to disagree?"

Jorge said, "I don't want you to be so unhappy with him"

"Shouldn't I be?" Six shrugged. "He's one of the Covenant." But that wasn't what was bothering her, really. It could have been another person, standing there learning English, and she would have felt the same way if that person had gone off with Jorge and had adventures and travails that, well, she couldn't even know how adventurous and troublesome they had been, because she hadn't been there. She tried to explain, but so many words would just trip one another up. "No. I'm sorry. He's been...good enough. I guess..."

Six did not have the term _third wheel_ in her vocabulary.

She just said it. "I don't want him to get between you and me. I don't want you paying attention to him when you could be paying attention to me."

Jorge said, "I don't know if you've noticed, Six, but I do want to pay attention to you quite often."

"So...are we going to learn languages together? Are we going to travel around?"

He said, "Haven't we?"

She thought about the skies of Reach above, reds and oranges kicked up out of the dirt as skirmishes overtook the spacedocks. They had traveled and he had taught her, Spartan signals and Hungarian words and this soft tone. Relk couldn't take that away. More importantly, he wasn't even trying. She said, "Yes."

She couldn't move closer to him, not with Fred's orders. But she could make the quietness and openness in her voice say the same thing. This was Aislinn's particular brand of bravery.

* * *

When Six and Jorge traded guarding duty with Vinh and Isaac they joined the others at the elbow turn. Fred and Jun were visibly asleep, leaning against the cave walls with their long legs stretched out so that Six had to step over them to sit down next to Halsey. Jorge remained standing, propping one hand against the wall near where Relk sat. Six evaluated the Elite in a new light now. His behavior had changed: he looked at her evenly, as if learning some English had put more intelligence-or more that she could recognize-in his dark eyes. He was growing increasingly aware, and not only that- increasingly less defensive.

Or he had been gaining those qualities for days, and she was only just seeing it now.

Six slept too for a time, curling up as best she could in the stiff armor. Stretching out on the floor had been easier than trying not to nudge Halsey with her boots. The doctor didn't seem to want to sleep. She ate and talked to Relk as Six dozed off.

When Six woke up again, Relk was tasting a bite-sized scrap of one of the MREs while Jun watched, his helmet on the floor between his feet, and nibbled at the rest of the bar. Jorge offered Six a hand and then, when she stood up, some food of her own. She clamped her helmet under her arm and ate graciously. The chewy bar restored her energy almost immediately. Remembering her conversation with Halsey, she dampened down her desire for more.

Isaac, standing with Will at the right-hand guard post, had his helmet off too. Six could see the small AI port at the back of his skull, a little silver thing with four clamps like the legs of a crab. Halsey had designed that, and supposedly Jorge had one too. Six didn't think she had ever seen it, since the big curving plates of armor he had added around his shoulders protected his neck as well. For some reason, though, the Spartan-III project hadn't felt the need for their soldiers to interface with AI. Spartan-IIs were meant to work with someone else, even if that someone was artificial. She wondered if any of them regretting never being able to work with an AI. Six's own experience with Halsey's Cortana hadn't been anything like what it could have been if the two of them had actually synched for battle.

If they had, maybe more of the Nobles would have survived...

Six's primary feeling, though, was of wondering what Will thought about all of it. She felt more comfortable with the twos now, even though there were still lines between Red Team and Noble Team. She just cared more about the others as people now, and that was Jorge's influence. Maybe he had taken inspiration from her too on how to admit to his feelings. They were a team within a team, something else entirely.

When everyone was awake and restored, they headed out again. Jorge stayed close behind Six, near the middle of the group with Halsey, instead of placing himself at the front or rear of the group. If Fred noticed the change in tactics, or ignorance of them, he didn't comment.

They kept walking. Occasionally, the cave shook, but never as badly as the first tremor. Six couldn't help glancing up at the ceiling, wondering how ready it was to fall.


	23. A Seemingly Impossible Vegetable

_A/N: Now is the time for me to reveal why this story became a "First Strike" AU at all. I mean, there were other reasons too. However: "Eight days. It hadn't seemed that long. They worked, they rested, they slept, and they waited. Dr. Halsey had taught them word games like twenty questions and simple cipher..."That's from "First Strike". And that's all we get. Eric Nylund somehow resisted the urge to write about five Spartans and a genius trapped in a cave for eight days, playing twenty questions. Which is a hilarious scenario._

_My will is just not that strong._

_Some of this dialogue was provided in conversation by an IRL friend who is known as TineLord37 on deviantArt. The rest was very difficult._

* * *

**XXIII**

Halsey insisted that they keep their minds sharp and alert as well as keeping their bodies relaxed and rested. Lack of physical exercise was not a problem, although MREs had not been designed to replace all of the nutrients that the human body normally got from the sun and fresh air. Even Spartans were supposed to be exposed to the elements sometimes. While Halsey couldn't pump sunlight in, she could keep them thinking about things other than the impending attacks.

The shaking was getting worse. They had been in the caves for five days, and the next week was creeping up on them like a deadline. Being trapped underground for a week was something the news would cover: if anyone knew they were down here. Because they didn't, no help was coming. For all Six knew, Reach might not even be accessible to humans now. Red Team, a strike force of the best the UNSC had to offer and in numbers designed to terrify and cripple the enemy, had failed. They were stuck here too.

The fifth day was a sullen walk. Six thought about how this was day five: that meant it was Jorge's day. She was Six, identifying more with her number than her name now that so many people had died for it, and so tomorrow was her day. Then Jun for the seventh day (the day of rest), and so on, until they made their own weeks and calendars here in the dark, new pantheons to organize the world around.

She walked on, holding her head high. Her mouth felt dry. When Fred called for a rest, precluding Halsey's orders this time, the respite was welcome. The others crouched down or sat, helmets coming off sweaty heads of hair. "Water?" Jorge passed around canteens of the relatively fresh bottled water that had been saved in his pack. While the Spartans could subsist partially on recycled water, the canteens that had been preserved kept the liquid cold and refreshingly metallic.

Six took a deep, steady draught and passed the canteen to Halsey, who investigated the ridged neck of the bottle before taking a few prim sips, like a bird. Halsey sighed when she handed it over to Jun. "If only I had something to read," she said.

"Do you need information, ma'am?" Six tipped her head.

"I just want something to read. A newspaper, for goodness sake. I couldn't exactly bring the latest science texts with me."

"Um, is there...something I can help with?"

"No, Spartan, it's not essential. I'm just...I need something to think about."

Jun felt like he needed to contribute. "Besides what we're going to do when we get out of here onto the alien-occupied surface?"

Halsey turned toward him. "I'm bored, Jun," she growled.

Six knew bored. Before joining Noble Team she had been assigned to guard duty for hours on end, at the office of a superior officer who had something against Spartans. "We could...play games or something. Count floor tiles. Count sheep."

Halsey didn't sound particularly jovial. "Word games would help Relk out." She looked across the hall to where the alien was crouching, now lapping at the bottle of water. Even if he was something besides seventy-five percent made of it, it sustained him well enough. He had gotten used to grimacing through MREs. Halsey said, "Come here, Relk."

The alien complied, hunching his shoulders and trying very hard to avoid stepping on anyone's feet.

Halsey said, "We're going to do a bit of an exercise. Twenty Questions. You try to guess what I'm talking about."

Relk said, "Why?" He had gained this word shortly after his conquering of 'what'.

"To increase your vocabulary."

Relk cocked his head.

"To make you stronger."

Jun mimed swooshing motions as with a sword until Kelly disapprovingly waved at him to stop. Relk seemed to understand this. He nodded and sat down right in the middle of the hallway, essentially preventing Will and Kelly from standing up. Fred, still further down the path, came closer to look over Relk's shoulder and watch as Halsey explained.

"You have twenty questions to guess what I'm thinking about. It can be any sort of object. Do you understand?"

Relk said, "This is for...strength?" He looked between the Spartans.

"It's a children's game, actually," said Halsey.

"Chiiil-dren."

"Yknow," Jun said. He leaned down to gesture a flat plane about three feet from the ground. "Children. Little people."

Relk nodded, although it was never clear to Six whether he understood that this word meant "young people" and not, say, civilians. But he looked attentively, if a little blankly, at Halsey.

"I've got it," she said. "Start in clockwise order."

"Er," said Six. "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" She couldn't help but giggling at the serious Halsey explaining the rules of a very casual game.

"Wait," Jun said. "That's not how you start it. We always started with 'is it animal, vegetable, or mineral'."

"No, I thought it was 'is it bigger than'-"

Halsey interrupted. "You may each ask a question however you like, you know. Everyone gets a turn."

"And what, exactly, is the purpose of this?" Isaac asked quizzically.

Jun said, "To guess the word she's thinking."

"To teach Relk more words," Jorge contributed.

"O-o-kay." Isaac did not sound convinced.

Six said, "Is it. Bigger than. A breadbox."

Halsey said, "No."

As Jun described to a breadbox (and bread) to Relk, with many gestures, the other Spartans took turns asking questions. "Can it level more than ten enemies at once," was Will's contribution , "Is it found in the regulated UNSC field kit," Fred's and "Is it yellow" Jorge's. Relk stalled for a while until he got the concept and asked "Does it please the Forerunners". Halsey answered a resounding "No" to all of these questions except for Relk's, at which she paused before offering a hesitant yes.

Jun said, "I got this."

Fred said, "It's not your turn,"

It was Six's turn. She said, "Whatever."

Jun said, "Coffee."

Halsey nodded very seriously.

* * *

The trip became a series of walls and words. Six's day passed without anything particularly significant happening to her. She talked to Jorge on and off, feeling more comfortable telling him the stray things she noticed about the cave. Some parts of the rock were darker, more dull than others. The alien symbols came and went, once spiraling around one another in a loop that nearly covered the wall before disappearing into the crinkled rock seam at the top of the wall. Six and Halsey both paused to take pictures, although Relk indicated that there wasn't any special significance to these symbols that he could see. The writer might just have gotten bored. Around a particularly interesting spirally rock that shone transparently yellow when their lights landed on it, Halsey got fed up with letting the Spartans decide the answer for Twenty Questions. Will stolidly refused to acknowledge that "M6 Grindell/Galilean Nonlinear Rifle" was not an easy guess.

The next one to come up with an answer was Jorge, and Will answered "Spartan Laser" with an almost psychic immediacy. Six, waiting for her turn, wondered if Relk would guess a Sangheili weapon quickly or not expect a human to come up with it. Her thoughts were all ordinance and psychology together, something you had to think about on the battlefield- which weapon would be best for which soldier? Each was matched to its wielder like a prescription to its patient. Jun's silence fit the sniper rifle, Jorge's turret fit his strength and reliability, the knife at Six's shoulder fit her stealth. What gun would Halsey pick? It would be something delicate, and it was the weapon Halsey would most likely guess...

But the game petered out, Halsey never guessing any weaponry at all. Halsey grew tired of the Spartans making references she didn't understand. The game had gotten them to talk more than before, and Red Team settled into a quiet reminiscence of battles gone by, successes that helped them feel that they would get out of this fight just as well. The dividing line between the original Red Team and Noble Team grew wider, though, as Six, Jun, and Jorge stayed silent. Six found herself watching the others to see if they knew how to contribute to the stories and the names she didn't know, just like Halsey didn't know the previous ones. They would take swaths of time to explain words to Relk, all of Noble Team taking turns to parse things into the words he knew already.

The builders of the cave had no concern for natural beauties that they unearthed. It seemed like their priorities had been cutting through the mountain, to whatever their mysterious destination was, as directly as possible. The cave system was as impressive as Reach's aboveground mountain ranges and crated-formed bays. Sometimes the path skirted things that Six knew would have drawn human explorers if only anyone had known they were there; once she paused, flattening her palm against the rune-marked wall, to peer into a narrow crack in the wall.

Jorge stopped behind her, gently gesturing that she should move on or stop the whole group. "What is it, Six?"

"Look." She moved aside so that he could look in. Their lamps lit a forest of spindly rock formations stretching up and across a tiny, natural box theatre maybe a foot deep.

Isaac started craning his neck to see what they were looking at, so Six moved on. Halsey looked back as she caught up. "What did you see, Spartan?"

"Just unusual formations. Nothing relevant to the mission."

Halsey nodded.

Six noticed that Halsey was flagging, having to march quickly to catch up with Jun ahead of her. His relaxed stride outstripped Halsey even unintentionally; he had settled into a rhythm. Six found herself concerned about Halsey's pace...and then wondering how she could ever have ended up feeling that after the doctor's cold treatment of Noble Team the first time they met.

Six asked, "How are you holding up?"

"You don't always have to worry about me," Halsey said.

"I don't," Six replied without thinking much about it. Halsey didn't seem to take offense. She was eerily good at reading someone's true intent.

The doctor's reply was bitter. "Take your time to look."

"Still bored?" Jorge said.

"Would you care to give me a topic? A non-lethal topic?"

He fell silent. Six cast around for something to talk about and couldn't get past the idea that there was no real reason to talk: they needed to finish their mission. Spartans were too focused to get bored, and for the first time Six was seeing how that was a kind of mental health that brilliant Halsey did not have.

Jorge said, "What do you want to talk about?"

"I just want to read the newspaper. Entertainment wouldn't matter to you."

"We have interests," Six had started to protest. Emile had knives, Carter had...well, he liked stories, but most of them were about his first Company.

"You cannot tell cinema from Shakespeare," Halsey said. "Did Deja ever teach you Shakespeare?"

"A little," Jorge said.

Six wasn't familiar with the name. Kurt and his AI helpers had taught her a lot about tactics and wars, with illustrations from history and metaphors. The idea that a Spartan team should be like a wolf pack was engrained in her thoughts. But Shakespeare was a new one. "Who?"

"Blasphemous," Halsey spat. "The things you could learn about the mindset of royalty, the way troops conduct themselves in battle, power plays...if I could, I'd tell Kurt to change his program."

"We learned some Macbeth," Jorge said. "Armies disguised themselves using trees as camouflage. Deja tried us on Hamlet, but the lesson was...brief."

"Of course, the prince who can never make up his mind wouldn't be relatable to you."

"We have indecision too," Six insisted. Halsey was going back to her untouchable self.

Halsey gestured as she walked. She was moving faster now, seemingly energized by having ideas to latch on to. Luckily, this was what Six had wanted. Halsey said, "But...the reason that Shakespeare plays hold a mirror up to life so well is that they include both comedy and tragedy. With brains like yours you could be geniuses or artists, but I made you for war."

Six said, "You didn't make us. I'd rather be a Spartan than...a business person or something."

"Do you really know what business entails?" Halsey looked back at her for a moment. Clearly she wanted to lock gazes, unafraid, but she had to keep looking ahead.

Six faltered. "There were...business buildings in New Alexandria. They provide cities with supplies and financial revenue..."

Halsey said, "You were denied the opportunity to know."

For the first time Six saw a sadness in Halsey, a pity that was not cold but nevertheless made her want to back away and stand up straighter, showing off the muscle and the armor that were the advantages she had.

Up ahead, Jun raised a hand in an alert signal. The comm brightened with voices: Fred calling a halt, Will asking what Jun had seen.

The sniper transmitted calmly. "We've got a rockfall up ahead."

Six saw a forest of lamplights tilt upward as the Spartans in front of her scanned the path. They crowded together, getting closer to the place where Jun, scouting at the front of the group, had found an end to the path. The immediate way was blocked by a jumble of dark rocks. The passageway, though, widened out. Just as the rockfall started, it became three times as wide as it had been for the past three days, the roof stretching out flat above them. The headlamps showed an upward slope, cluttered with rocks. The ceiling rose with the rock face and did not lower, but the top of the fall was too far away to see with the helmet lights.

"What's this?" Vinh grumbled. "Dead end?"

"No." Fred shifted forward to plant one green-armored foot on a wide rock. "Looks like it just keeps going up."

Vinh pushed to the front of the group to look at it herself, Isaac following. "Sorry, excuse me," he said quietly as he passed Six and Jorge. Six muttered, "It's fine," to his back even as she was trying to get a closer look at their path too, without obstructing Halsey's view entirely. If the group were to step far enough into the widened path to stand so that all of them could see, they would have to climb partway onto the rocks.

Relk could see over all of them. The crest of his helmet nearly brushed the top of the passage. The Elite said, "Out."

"This is the way out?" Fred took another step up.

"Yes." Relk nodded. Some dust scraped off the roof and drifted down around his shoulders.

"Looks like it's the only way," Jun said.

Fred thought a moment, then gestured toward the top of the hill. "Jun, take a look up there. Tell us how far it goes."

Jun picked his way through the group, ascended a few rocks, and holstered his sniper rifle on his back in exchange for the hunting knife he'd had sheathed at his shoulder. He started up, fast. Watching him go, Six could see that rough steps made for long strides had been cut into the seemingly random pile of rocks. Jun ascended quickly.

Jorge said, "We could be near the surface now."

Halsey said, "We must still be miles down."

Miles wasn't very far for people who had routinely hiked for days, even if it was the prospect of miles up a treacherous, if not particularly steep, slope. The Spartans stayed silent.

A few minutes later, Jun's voice sounded again. "It levels out up here. Not a problem."

"Good," Fred said. "Keep formation. Vinh and Jorge, watch the sides. Jun, any side passages?"

"Nothing, and no life signs."

"Huh. Let's go!"

Six thought that Fred sounded uncharacteristically glad for a change. Maybe he was bored too.

They started up. The MJOLNIR armor kept their feet steady, but it couldn't prevent loose rocks from shifting. Six felt head-sized rocks start shifting under her heavy feet as soon as she started climbing. Other stones tumbled down as Fred and Will ascended fast, using hands and knees to crawl up the steep face. Six ducked and let her shoulder and chin armor take a rain of pebbles and dust. Almost immediately, though, she looked down and saw the unarmored Halsey starting up.

Kelly lingered at the bottom, watching Halsey start to ascend. Beside her, Isaac tucked his assault rifle against his chest and turns his back to the rock face just in case an ambush came from behind. They would all have to holster their weapons to make the climb. Kelly called out Halsey's name. When the scientist turned around, Kelly mimed pulling a hood over her head. Halsey nodded and unfolded the hood of her white parka. The puffy material wasn't exactly threatening, but it would protect her from possible avalanches to a point.

Six kept her attention on her own ascent. She heard Kelly and Isaac start up, and turned for a brief moment to see Kelly progressing up, crouched low to the ground and moving slowly and spidery. Halsey's face was a bright moon.

Six heard rattling rocks ahead of her, and watched Halsey's pale hand stretch toward the next stone step and grab. "Do you need help, ma'am?"

"I'm fine, Spartan."

Six felt more rocks shifting slightly beneath her weight. She nervously looked down between her hands as if looking at the sharp-edged stones could keep them secure. It was just...needless for Halsey to still feel like she had to save face. Six said, "I'm having a little trouble of my own."

Halsey sighed. Six thought that the idea behind the sigh might be Halsey's exasperation at having to keep explaining herself. But she was the one who was so keen on differences between Spartans and mainline humans...The doctor said, "What we all learn eventually is that even in the most heart-wrenching scenes, sometimes somebody chases a dog across the stage."

From somewhere ahead of them, Jun called, "Who's up for Twenty Questions."

Will said, "Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?"

* * *

The rockfall eventually leveled out. Near the top it started to appear more organized and artistic, long stride-length steps sweeping and branching all over the rock face, but generally heading toward the top. Relk stood up and walked one of the stairways relatively easily, his long toes gripping the edge of each of the stones that had been wedged into the ground to form a step. The fall no longer appeared natural, although the more Six thought about it the more she realized that the stairs were not meant to be the easiest way up. If the Covenant or the Forerunners had wanted to make the way easy, they would have simply paved it like the rest. Instead, they had placed rocks here purposefully, fixing some into the ground and tossing others down the slope so that they would naturally wedge against one another. The rock face was a defense, like a pit filled with spikes. If the inhabitants of the cave had still been around to stand at the top of this defense and shoot down into it, it would have been nearly impossible for attackers to make progress.

As it was, by the time they reached the top, the whole team was beginning to feel more vulnerable than they had since they were out in the open. Six was tiring. She could see the forms of Vinh and Jorge in the distance, partially blurred out by her night vision. They moved a bit slower than the rest, keeping their weapons out and struggling for footholds firm enough not to necessitate the four-point crawl that the others, with the notable exception of Relk, had adopted. Kelly and Halsey lagged, finally holding one another up. Kelly would lift the doctor off her feet for a few steps before crouching back down. Halsey's arms around her Spartan's back and stomach seemed to help Kelly at least find the resolve to walk on, although her breathing was rough. She had been the first to drop out of the latest round of Twenty Questions. Isaac had fallen silent after, too concerned with keeping the pace at the end of the line. Six had found herself unable to bother about Jun's answer, even if it was a seemingly impossible vegetable. It took them almost an hour to traverse the distance they had been making in minutes before.

It reassured all of the Spartans that no enemy emerged to take advantage of the perfect ambush spot. At the top, they unbent and stretched. Six reached the top of the slope and found more paved rock like they had been walking over before. The path stayed wide, though, almost large enough for the group to all walk together. She could see Jun in the front, energetically continuing into the dark passage, and the others drifting into the three-abreast patrol pattern that Noble had also adopted on long hikes. Halsey and Kelly emerged over the edge, the scientist's parka turned almost gray with the dust the group had kicked up. Halsey sat at the edge for a moment, catching her breath. Isaac unshouldered his assault rifle as soon as he stood on the flat ground, watching over the way they had come. Six almost expected to hear a growling cry come out of the darkness, mourning its lost chance to attack.

The cave got less haunted as they went on. The wider paths and slight upward slope that continued, albeit more gently, for miles helped to differentiate the journey and make it seem like they were making progress. The lower parts of the cave became a county only remembered, and Six's dominant impression of it was the cloying close press of the walls. She had almost forgotten that, in some parts of the world, people could walk as far from one another as they wanted.

As the path sloped up it also became more varied. Perhaps the cave was younger; certainly it had had more water, coming in active from the surface. Six found herself stepping over whorls that looked like the fossilized imprints of puddles in the floor. The Forerunner runes had a harder time staying in a straight line here, but they were also more deeply and thickly cut than elsewhere. Triangle and circle shapes had been etched inches deep. Here, it seemed, the cave's decorators had cared more, had more energy, or both.

Relk stopped at a pattern Six had also noticed as she had walked up behind him. It was a very deep, clear sentence of runes, winding around a thin drapery of rock that clung to the wall.

"More new...the others," the Sanghili said. The last half of his speech was punctuated with a satisfied huff, as if he was very pleased with his grasp of grammar.

Jun looked over his shoulder. "Newer than the rest?"

Relk rasped, "Yes."

"Are we getting near the top?" Kelly, still near the back of the group, had gotten the strength in her voice back.

Relk immediately honed in on her. "More near."

"Eyes up," Fred ordered. "We're getting there."

"Great." Six couldn't help feeling eager. When Jun headed toward the front of the group, she went with him.

He turned to look at her. "Are you coming scouting with me, Six?"

"It's something to do. Now we've got all this space, let's use it!"

Jun laughed in his brief, low way. "If you say so."

Six brushed against someone in her rush to get to the front of the group, and said "Sorry" before she realized who it was. Jorge looked down at her and patted the back of her helmet before either of them had time to think about it. Head bowed for a moment, she smiled and then dashed on, giving him a wave which Jorge and Halsey both returned.

Six and Jun passed an uncomplaining Fred and started walking a few hundred feet in front of the group. Jun carried his sniper rifle, the barrel pointed toward the ground. Six unclipped her assault rifle from her back for the first time in a long time and adopted a similar ready position. Relk stalked along behind them as the group started to spread out and relax. There was no natural light in sight yet, but surely it must just be around the next corner, or the one after that... When the cave opened up, the ceiling so high that Six's light almost couldn't reach its vaulted corners, she thought they must be there.

Instead, the cave continued to widen. It gained steps that looked like the dried-out version of a waterfall that filled successive pools, each of them separated by six-foot high towers of rock that had been too hard at the center for water to completely wear them away. Instead they gained sharp, shelflike edges. Some were like columns, while others kept their mass horizontal, making boulder-sized plateaus that looked like couches. These structures filled a chamber hundreds of feet long in every direction. It was impressive and Six just wanted to explore it, but first she glanced at her HUD, drifting behind a rock column that would provide decent cover if someone started firing from the sides. There were no life signs except the ten green dots arrayed behind her at the edge of her map.

Jun must have seen the same thing; he moved further into the expanse. He hopped up onto a wide, curving rock the shape of the tusk of a Warthog if the end was sheered off. She watched the thick backs of his foot armor adjust to the uneven ground.

"It's clear up here," Jun radioed to the others. He sounded pleased with himself. "Come on in."

Six looked back to see the lights from the others drifting slowly toward them. The unlit patch that was Halsey broke toward the front of the group, drifting at the edge of Fred's light as if eager to get out. Six turned to wait for them, weapon still at the ready, as with a loud clunking sound Jun sat down, kicking dust from the top of the tusk.

Halsey marched right up to him when the lights met. "If preserving the natural state of this cave was any priority right now, I would be telling you not to sit there."

Fred was scanning the far corners. "Just to be clear, that's definitely not a priority."

"If we ever get the planet back from the Covvies, I'll be sure to tell the reconstruction crew to put caution tape around this particular rock." Jun said. He jumped down, nearly into Kelly's path. The Spartan-II trailed after Fred. Her comment was quiet, but Six heard it and thought about her and Isaac pausing at the bottom of the rockfall.

"We should stop to rest here."

Fred didn't protest but he obviously wanted to go on; he took one step forward and tapped his heel against the floor. "The exit might be close."

Kelly said, "And who knows what's waiting for us on the other side."

Six wouldn't have pegged Fred as the optimistic type, but he sighed as if he had expected the team to emerge onto the alien-infested planet with all of their problems solved. He got his commanding voice back to say, "We camp here."

The air was cool and clammy. Six chose a corner and took her helmet off, raking her fingers through matted, greasy hair. Neither Vinh nor Halsey, who bunked down in one of the higher pool impressions, looked much better. Six watched with some envy as Relk climbed Jun's rock and lay there on his stomach almost like a big cat, his shovel-sized hands draping over the edge where the tusk would be. Whatever was under his helmet didn't seem to be bothering him. Six found herself wishing, for the thousandth time, that she could take a shower. Even one of the ten-minute cold varieties she'd usually gotten on Onyx would be wonderful.

For a few minutes, wedged onto her side into as comfortable a curl as the armor would allow, she just watched the camp unfold and felt the tiredness from the climb start to weigh down her limbs. Higher up the cave, Jorge and Fred helped set up the antibiotic field again and Kelly slipped inside, worrying at the thick gashes in her chest armor. Six wondered whether she had opened a wound on the climb, and whether Halsey should help, but Kelly waved the help she was offered away. Jorge and Fred retreated, and Jorge homed to Six. He sat beside her and leaned against the wall, resting his head on his arms. The round chin of the helmet, in shadow and tucked against his gauntlets, gave his intimidating mask a kind of childish vulnerability. As the camp quieted and lights turned off, leaving only the green glow of the medical field and the distant swinging of Will's headlamp as he patrolled, Six fell asleep.


	24. Open Space

**A/N:** Sorry about the delay! I have been doing NaNo and also moved to England for a while. Here is a long chapter though! And exciting. It has romance! Action! Scary monsters! And...Relk?

* * *

**XXIV**

Six woke up feeling uneasy. Others were already moving around in the cave. The first sight she blinked lazily against was Halsey sitting on a rock, tapping her foot and looking down at her hands like she expected a full, steaming coffee cup to materialize in them at any moment. Six couldn't help but feel sorry for her. Kelly and Isaac lurked around the perimeter, guns at the ready. Other Spartan forms were still sleeping on the ground; Six could see Jun propped up against a rock, helmet on so that he looked wide-eyed even as his slack hands gave a clue to his being thoroughly asleep. Six got up, careful of even the smallest noises. The edges of her boots scraped against the rock. Beside her, Jorge was bare-faced and sleeping, turned with one cheek leaning toward his shoulder plate. His eyes, closed, looked small and sculpted by deep wrinkles. Six had a strong sense that if she went back to sleep again she would be failing in some way to protect him: something was wrong about the day, and only moving would ease the restlessness that twined with the wrong in the back of her head. Maybe it was just unrest, days of odd watches without a sun to tell the time catching up with her.

Her HUD said it was well into the morning, around 0800 hours. Aboveground, the sun would have been out for a long time. Six had seriously overslept, but none of the twos had woken her up. Was something wrong? Was someone lost or scouting?

A series of careful steps brought her to Kelly's side. The Spartan-II turned and looked down at her, the visor of her helmet expressive like brows.

Six said, "Ma'am."

"You have a question?"

Six shifted. "I was wondering if everything was alright. It's getting late..."

"We're fine, Aislinn." The green helmet tipped back toward the distant exit passage. "We'll move out in about an hour. Halsey wanted the team up, but some of us haven't gotten relief yet. Fred just went to sleep."

"He was on watch all night?"

"He was making sure we were all alright. He says something feels funny."

"Trust your feelings." Kurt's advice was out of Six's mouth almost before she thought about it, but she agreed wholeheartedly with it, and Kelly just nodded.

"Enjoy the time to rest."

Six said, "We're not in a rush to get anywhere anyway."

Kelly turned her gaze on Six fast. But she said, "That's right."

That was odd. Six picked her way back to the spot where she had slept, thinking about all the things she could already have gotten done on the surface. If this was a regular Spartan team, they'd have been up at four or five and hiking hard by now. It wasn't regular, though...and she felt the tiredness seep back into her limbs as she thought of having extra time to sleep.

She eased to the ground next to Jorge, wanting to fold her knees underneath her but unable in the armor. Even that thought produced a sigh now, a drawn-out wishing to be back in a prefabricated base and at least have a bed and a room. She raked her fingers through her hair. Her helmet, an easier alternative, was sitting upright next to Jorge's leg, almost looking at her.

He opened his eyes as she reached for it, and when she sat back with the rounded cheek plates against her palms he smiled and sat up slightly. He still looked like the wall was the most comfortable thing in the world. She set the helmet down behind her when he gestured for her to come closer, and when he opened his arms to her she curled up against him, running her fingers along the square sides of the armor plates on his arm. The way they sat at the edge of the spotlight, his skin looked gray, It wasn't exactly comfortable to lean her cheek against his shoulder plate. The unease and the thoughts of what else she might be doing now if the war had gone a very different way disappeared. The rest of her body felt the same as she always did inside her suit, cocooned inside the movement-accelerating gel layer that denied temperature. He had to have been feeling the same way.

But, something deeper than her body was different here in the quiet beside him. Her restless energy was gone, but the permissible tiredness that was left soothed her.

There was something...right about just sitting here, not having to say anything.

He leaned over to trace the edge of her face with gloved fingers. He found the criss-cross mark on the top of her cheek and touched his palm to the pale, gnarled skin that faded up toward her ear, as if he could feel the roughness of the scar. She captured his hand in hers and propped her chin on his gauntlet. "Good morning."

"Good morning." Another smile that transformed his face.

She said, "Kelly says we've got some time to relax."

"Hmm. This isn't bad."

"Sure. A place to live and no one to fight. We could be done with the Covenant and just have this." At the same time, though, even the thought of stopping filled her with anger. "If it weren't for this blasted cave..." There was still an alien army up there tromping over Reach and waiting for the Spartans to emerge from the caves like mice in front of a cat. Another kind of unease worked its way up from feet that wanted to run as soon as she thought of the aliens. She felt her legs tense and drew her knees closer to her body, the urge to get up and keep moving now shaking through her even as she tried to lean back into Jorge's embrace. The two feelings, his presence beside her and the urge to run, to expend some electric energy, tied terribly together and fought. Logic ticked at the back of her mind, subduing the rush.

Maybe Spartans in peacetime would forever have to fight the urge to ease back into war.

Jorge brought her back to reality. "You think so?" She wondered if he thought the idea of staying in a perpetual morning and rest period was shameful, was 'soft' as he said sometimes.

"Yeah. I won't trade it for what we do until the Covvies are gone, but," she shrugged. "After."

He said, "Maybe one day." He shrugged. "I've thought about it. But there's too much work to do first." He sounded enthusiastic instead of disappointed; Six wondered if he too felt the urge to run. Conflicting with the soft emotion she was feeling, the fightlust skirled around inside her like a tornado ready to drop whatever pieces of self she couldn't hang on to-

Who knew emotion had so many feelings?

She asked, "What would you want to do, after all this?"

"Ah, find somewhere quiet. Have a place. But I want it on Reach."

Six nodded, tightening her grip on his hands as they twitched and squeezed. She felt him try to relax again.

She said, "We'll get the planet back. No problem. It's what Doctor Halsey is getting us ready for." She did not know what else to say. What was the use of creating visions of a future that might not happen, part of her mind asked? But those visions were distracting. And that, like their hands clasped together, was nice. Ironically, it seemed to be distractions that would get both of their minds back on course.

He moved to pull his arm more tightly around her shoulders, letting her lean the back of her neck against the flat of the shoulder plate. She reached up to touch the scar over his eye, barely able to feel the roughness of the skin through her gloves. There would be more nuance in it if she bared her skin. "How'd you get this?"

He sighed. "Insurrectionists. A scout caught me unawares with a grenade while I was talking to one of our spies on the outskirts of their camp. Foolish way to go. Nasty stuff, but I didn't let them take the eye."

She leaned back, trailing her fingers across his hair. "I take it they came out looking worse for it, though."

"Quite a bit worse," he said. "What about yours?" He nodded at the criss-cross scars at the top of her cheek. "That looks like a neat job too, no plasma burns."

Six smiled. She could expend some energy like this, joking around."Guess."

"What?"

"Guess."

He cursed under his breath, blustering. "I'm guessing... it happened when you earned hyper-lethal."

"Just after, actually." She indicated one slash mark-" Guy with a knife," and then the other- "Pointy rock. Not one of my finest moments."

He gave a little laugh that turned up the corners of his mouth. "You tripped."

"And then finished the mission, yeah."

He leaned closer. He had to shift to move in the heavy armor, so that he removed his arm from around her and instead lay a hand gently on her shoulder. The green plate covered up the black underarmor between her orange torso and shoulder rigs. She moved fast to clash more colors, sliding her hand along his torso plate to make more autumn yellow and orange. She kissed him quickly, still rearranging so that they were both crouched on the floor and balancing one another, shifting closer. Once the shift was complete, though, the next kiss was slow and contemplative, the taste of skin and the texture of him. It had not been like this before, on the surface of the planet. Before the Solace there had been quietness like this but they had also been more tentative, hesitantly finding out about one another with jokes and embraces. This was a letting-go that banished the nervous energy. He rested his forehead against hers just to look at her.

She smiled. Good morning."

"Good morning, Six."

Jun stirred, and Six had to turn and look. Relk was up too, doing his hunchbacked, turkey-legged alien walk near where Kelly had been. Halsey had abandoned her pretense of coffee to disappear behind some rock, occasionally emerging only to turn around and pace back. Then she hesitated, though, and looked toward the higher part of the room as though someone was calling her. Six heard tinny comm voices coming from her helmet and picked it up, passing Jorge's to him as she moved from his embrace. The helmet fell cool and dark around her face.

Halsey was saying, "-be right there."

Then it was Will's voice, excited and nervous. "Fred found something."

"Gather up," Fred said. "I think there's another passage down here."

Halsey and Relk hustled away. Jun gave Six and Jorge one long look before getting up without removing his helmet, walking away as smoothly as if he had only been sitting down for a few moments. Six and Jorge got up with a bit less grace. They moved quickly to Fred's side. He was kneeling by the wall. Kelly was behind him, her hand almost touching his shoulder, but only because she was holding it normally at her side. Fred's hand was damp with blood since he had been unwrapping a bandage from around pale, purpling fingers; some of the blood trailed off onto the wall and Six followed it in rapt fear until she saw the runnel of spiral symbols and the gap. A new hallway had opened up, narrow and at an angle. A hidden door had slid away. Relk said the same to that effect as he lumbered over and looked at the new place. Halsey was wrapping Fred's hands. She questioned him: "The Forerunner symbols lead here?"

"I touched them and the wall shifted," Fred said calmly, eyes flicking toward the new path.

"Blood opens it?" Six asked in disgust.

"Heat," Relk replied, and moved into the new path, his head bobbing on his long neck. Six peered after him.

Jorge looked down at Fred. "You going to be all right?"

Fred worked his way to his feet smoothly, slipping his hand away from Halsey's and picking his glove and gauntlet up from the floor. When he replaced them, the wrist material slid neatly under the forearm armor and clamped. Looking at the Spartans arrayed now, Six realized that everyone was awake, all looking at this new passage and all thinking the same thing - a new place to go, a new direction to follow. They were getting close, if not to the surface, then to the thing the Forerunners had wanted to keep down here.

It took Fred almost no time to get ready to go and the rest of them slightly more. Six stayed by Jorge as he shouldered his heavy pack. It was her turn to hold one of the hard-sided cases of water and Halsey's electronics, so she accepted the package from Jun in silence.

Halsey, Relk, and Fred led the way into the new passage. The others followed, able to gather together now that the path was wide enough to admit four abreast. Halsey said something to Relk that Six couldn't quite hear, but it resulted in the Sangheili procuring the crystal he had picked up.

The group moved between gray walls and small, stubbly stalactites. Six held the box tightly in her right hand. Then there was more light in the cavern, a gradual building of a yellow glow that her eyes noticed before her mind did, blinking a few times. She had been without natural light for so long that the experience of it seemed entirely new and energizing. The box in her hand contained the spotlight, coiled up on itself.

Jun said, "You see that, boss?"

"Yeah." Fred took the nickname as if it was an actual rank.

"Either something's gone wrong with my light, or there's outside up ahead."

"If yours is broken, mine is too," Will said. There was palpable excitement in his voice, tempered by a fear that there couldn't possibly be an opening up ahead. Six knew exactly how he felt. And wouldn't any entrance to the caves be guarded by the Covenant who had been looking for them this whole time?

Fred sounded like he was fighting the same feelings, but his words were calm and sharp. "Weapons ready, masks on."

Six put her box down, as did Halsey and Jorge. He, Will, and Kelly redistributed fast, magnetizing what they could do their broad backs. Six held her DMR in both hands, cupping its rounded belly as if she were holding an animal.

No one had taken their helmet off on the last leg of the trip, but Six understood why Fred had warned them. Her mask darkened to protect her eyes from the light, but they still watered, and she emerged squinting into a room so large that it dizzied her.

There was a little patch of sky far, far up, as blue as it had been on the day she had arrived on Reach. A few speckles of cloud confirmed that she was indeed looking at the sky, and not some kind of energy shield. The walls were tiered like a stadium and so high that they seemed about to curve in on themselves and fall through the center of the expanse. In the middle of the room sat a blue stone.

Relk said, "Oh."

Nearly everyone looked at him. He spread his hands, apologetic. "I was wrong. Sangheili did not want this." He held up his crystal. "They wanted that."

As Relk walked toward the blue stone, Six saw the uneven face where the smaller crystal that Relk held had been chopped off from the rest. Relk turned to move toward the center of the room, and Six thought she saw him waver as if seen through high heat. A red light came on at the side of her visor just as she saw Fred put his hand to his cheek in surprised acknowledgement of the same signal.

"What're you doing out there?" Fred yelled. Six's HUD told her that radiation levels were rising, the air becoming so energized and so poisonous that it could eat at their shields, and their cells too if it got that far-

Relk said, "The Forerunners wanted us to find this."

Jun snapped, "It's getting hot in here! We better move!"

Six started to move backward, brushing past Jorge and staying behind him. Around his arms she could see Relk reverently, slowly slide the smaller crystal into its former place on the larger one. His eyes were very wide, actual whites showing at the edges as his barely-discernible pupil shrank and the huge black iris grew. He was caught in the same sort of fascination the small crystal had exerted over Six, Jun, and Halsey when they first saw it. Six couldn't feel that effect from the larger one, though. It was simply large and imposing, almost gaudy, like a plastic museum replica of something that was supposed to be important to another culture.

Then Relk picked up the completed crystal and held it close. It looked like it was heavy; his feet wobbled a little bit, but then he held it comfortably. It was only the size of a DMR. The radiation increased in bursts. Jorge swung around to shield Halsey, and Six found herself rather suddenly on the outskirts of their embrace.

"Get moving, Relk," Jorge bellowed, and then in a much smaller voice he looked over his shoulder. "Aislinn."

So she was looking at him when the red dots started filling up her radar, more and more until she could see the purple noses of Covenant ships packing into the tiny circle of distant blue sky.

"Back up!" Fred barked, and Six followed the order, covering Jorge and Halsey as they backed into the corridor they had just come from.

"There's another path over there." Jun pointed across the cavern, past the plinth and Relk, who was still standing with the crystal in hand, looking at the Covenant ships like they were a choir of angels. Namely with a gaping sort of disbelief that awe and fear eventually caught up to. Behind him, there was another passageway, a dark hole in the wall.

Fred said, "Good, we're gonna aim for that point. Primary objective is to protect Halsey."

Purple-and-white striated energy beams whooshed into existence. The Covenant had dropped gravity lifts. There were at least five of them, in a star shape around the cavern, some connecting to the upper tiers and others to the floor. Relk was partially obscured behind one of the round, blue-purple walls. Six wasn't sure whether keeping the crystal was an objective or not, but Fred's order meant that she didn't have to care.

The team started dashing across the cavern just as the Covenant came down. Six aimed her feet for the dark pathway as if she actually wanted to go back into a cave with all that blue sky above her, because now there were laser blasts coming down from above before the Covenant even got on the ground. Six saw beams of every color, the pastel blue of Jackal shields, the pink spikes from needlers that clattered harmlessly on the ground and exploded in a puff of smoke. The air filters on the side of her helmet pulled in the smell of smoke. She saw Elites floating majestically down the reversed gravity lifts, craning their long necks to look into the center of the cavern where Relk was still standing, agape, suddenly looking very unarmed.

Jorge looked at Aislinn, Fred, and Halsey in quick success. "Fred, go." Jorge put a hand on Halsey's shoulder. "I'm gonna hold them off and you're going to go." He could have been ordering a pizza he was so calm.

Halsey went. She padded over to Fred's side fast, looking with the rest of the team at the distant door.

There wasn't time for anything else. Red Team ran, Jun coming up behind Halsey like a Falcon escort and watching her back. Fred just went. More gunfire came in and pinned Six and Jorge against the wall. Six leaned out and fired with her DMR, turning Jackal shields pink and succeeding in only drawing more fire. Something splashed off of Jorge's armor. He started moving forward, mowing Grunts down. She took one long step out and lobbed a grenade between the blue column and the largest group of aliens heading for Fred. It exploded in a blue burst, and out of the static of the detonation she heard Jorge's voice.

"Do you have a plan, Six?"

"Not let you get killed?"

"Sounds good."

She gestured with one hand, then clamped it back on the gun. "Head for Relk?"

That would be tactically smart. There was a whole ring of Elites around him, but they weren't coming close to the blue crystal. Instead, they bobbed their head and talked, while around them a whole army full of Jackals and Grunts wobbled their way toward the Spartans. The circle of Elites was eerie, like a church service held in the middle of a battlefield. Six felt sweat stick to her palms and then be whisked away by the cool material of her jumpsuit. She ducked and rolled, one controlled fall that sent her under a saw-blade of plasma and behind the shield of the nearest Jackal. She shot it under the throat, a few raindrops of bright-colored alien blood sprinkling across her visor. Behind her, Jorge powered through the crowd. The aliens were having to line up, getting in one another's way. Six couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the room. Jorge, though, had the turret gun slug against his right hip and fired one-handed. A Grunt waving a plasma grenade in both hands tried to cut between Six and him to get at his left, and Jorge picked it up by the gas-filled backpack and just threw it. It landed in the crowd behind the Elites, and when the grenades exploded, six silver-armored heads raised.

A needle bolt scraped across Six's shoulder. She thought for one awful moment about the sword through her leg as she gunned the offending alien down from a distance. Jorge had three Jackals circling him now, shields bobbing as they worked in concert like ancient foot-soldiers.

Kurt had taught about shield walls. Six hoped that Halsey had too.

Six ducked, her own knees almost hitting her on the chin, and drew the foot-long combat knife from its holster on her chest armor. She looked at Jorge and he looked back and saw the plan in the knife in her hand.

(This was the team mindset they had all talked about, the almost-supernatural thing that kept Spartans alive. Non-augmented people could and did it too. It was really about the team.)

She threw the knife; he caught it. He had never kept a blade of his own on his armor, but she didn't see why as he swept the knife down at a Jackal and impaled it as it tried to grab onto his arm. Another one fired, a couple of bursts that made the white shimmer of Jorge's weakening shield trace the outline of his armor. He powered through the other two Jackals, though, making Six confident enough in his ability to handle herself for her to circle the Elites. The concentration of Covenant were going after the other Spartans now, trying to squeeze into a narrow corridor, and Six hoped Halsey, Jun, and the others would be all right. She welcomed the respite. These Elites seemed bureaucratic, holding lit swords and heavy guns but mostly talking, and making sure the other troops were doing their work for them. Ducking behind Jackal shields and hulking Skirmisher backs, Six got close to Relk.

He just looked at her, eyes wide.

She jammed a foot against the reverse curve of his knee and pulled at his shoulder armor on the other side, climbing using the assassination technique she had used on many Elites in her time. It dragged him down and backwards, and then she had the mouth of her assault rifle shoved up against his neck, under the pointed chin armor. Relk gasped and went absolutely still. Grunting sounds and laser-fire behind her signaled that Jorge was still fighting, and when she glanced back at him she was chilled to see a Hunter lumbering out of the crowd. Smaller aliens scattered. The Hunter swayed, toxic-looking tubes on its back casting a green light on the dim day.

Six put her helmeted chin as close as she could get to where she thought Relk's ear should be. "Call this off, or you die."

In English, Relk rasped out, "I am not important enough!"

Six raised an eyebrow. Would the Elites really not care enough to ransom this guy?

Another Hunter was coming, raising a plasma weapon almost as long as Six's whole body. The footsteps pounded the ground. The rest of the aliens were background noise like a crowd at a concert. The first Hunter fired at Jorge. He dodged out of the way, but ended up in a crowd of Skirmishers, and the next time Six glanced at him he had one knee on the ground and his shields flaring again.

(This wouldn't work. This was crazy. There were too many of them, and Relk couldn't do anything, and-

if the odds couldn't be beaten, might as well give it your all in pursuit of the impossible.)

Six had stopped breathing. Her shoulders seemed seized up somewhere around her ears.

One of the Elites raised a hand. In the other he held a sword, a two-pronged shimmering thing so bright that it almost couldn't be seen. Another barked an order.

Slowly, the Covenant actually stopped firing.

The Elite with the sword was a thickset one, with layer-plated silver armor and dark brown skin, less purplish than Relk's. If Six could tell anything from his expression, he wasn't happy. The elephantine wrinkles around his eyes and the top half of that ridiculous, split-petal mouth made him look old. He said something deep and garbled that made the other Elites nod enthusiastically and all of the Covenant stop and turn toward him. The noises of guns and shouts became footsteps and breathing. Six released her souring held breath.

Relk was still standing closest to the large crystal. Six could see the blue glow from over his shoulder.

The Elites started discussing something. Relk was shivering, so Six slid down to the floor and kept her gun leveled at his face.

She glanced back at Jorge. He had stood up and was looking at the aliens around him, both hands holding the turret gun and the knife on the ground.

"What are they talking about?" Six asked Relk.

He fluttered his mandibles in what couldn't possibly have been a sentence: it was probably the equivalent of a nervous "Er..."

Six raised her rifle.

He said, very quickly, "I don't know..."

"What?"

"I don't know."

The big Elite said something else and raised a hand, indicating the Spartans with a wave.

One Hunter lurched forward. Six heard its armor creak before she saw it move. She whipped around as the Hunter next to Jorge fired, disintegrating his shield. She broke into a run. There was always another Hunter, though-and the big aliens had one arm encased in a cannon topped with syringes of green plasma. The body of the second Hunter's gun caught Six across the jaw. She flew, landing on her back with her head ringing and breath gone. She shook her head and started to get up.

The Hunter pressed a foot down on her chest and swung the gun like a baseball bat.

Six blacked out.


	25. Captives

**A/N:** Hello. I'm back in America. This chapter marks the point of departure from First Strike: for those of you that don't know, the blue crystal was an element from that book, and Halsey finding a shard facilitates basically the rest of the Halo expanded universe. My use for it is almost done. I gave my characters some leeway here and the story is going in an unexpected direction even for me, but I hope it enables more characterization. Six and Jorge were always supposed to be the focus of the story, and I want to be able to delve more into who they are. Also, the last bit of this came from me pretty much asking myself 'What would Bungie do?', so if the action scene feels cursory that's because ideally you can imagine yourself playing it. Also, wordswithout wrote some dialogue in this one.

* * *

**XXV.**

Six woke up surrounded by light. She thrashed, trying to get the Hunter's foot off her so she could...maybe she could grab the knife Jorge had dropped...

There was no ground beneath her.

The thrash became a gradual upward curve of her body as she failed to fight against the strange forces around her. She looked around, the movement following the natural drift of her surroundings. A few more blinks and she saw that it she was in a gravity lift. The pastel blue, glowing column was carrying her upward, small, shining motes of dust traveling with her. She could see the cave walls sliding by.

The tiered room was far, far below.

Six twisted around, reaching for whatever weaponry she had on her, but there was nothing. Quick stock of the situation revealed the door to a Covenant ship getting quickly closer above her, and another gravlift meters away, holding Jorge: he looked as knocked out as she had been. Elites and other aliens were still gathered in the room below her. There was no sign of the other Spartans, on her HUD or near the side of the cave where she could just make out the uneven rock of the second passageway.

She caught a glimpse of blue sky between two rounded Covenant ships before she floated inside one of them. The walls were all purple, veined through with a fatty-looking white. There were Elites waiting for her, three of them and a cadre of Skirmishers. The Skirmishers looked, as usual, perpetually confused with their messy mohawk of white feathers. An iris door closed below her.

Just as Six was wondering how they were going to get her down, the gravlift was reversed. Her stomach lurched as she drifted toward the floor and ended up on all fours against it. A headache gradually made itself known behind her left ear; the Hunter must have rattled her around in her helmet. She tasted for broken teeth and didn't find any, but there was probably going to be a nasty bruise on her cheek any time now... she couldn't have been out long, though. She wasn't dizzy. They must just have shoved her into the gravlift as fast as they could. Where was Relk? For that matter, why was Six still alive?

Elites moved in on her as Jorge, now standing, got the same treatment on the other side of the bay and was hidden from her view. There were a lot of aliens here, more at one time than she'd fought on the Long Night of Solace. They must have figured out that Spartans could take them if they came in waves. It was also obvious that this was a staging area for a large attack: either it had been a force intended for Reach's surface that had been diverted, or that blue crystal was really, really important...about as important as Halsey had made it sound.

One Elite stood apart from the others, its hands at its sides. It turned away as soon as Six met its stare. (Funny how she was starting to be able to tell them apart...)

Others waded into the gravlift column to surround her. Six didn't think that trying to talk would help. She raised her hands, but a shovel-sized Elite paw came down on each fist. Her hands were dragged behind her back. The Elites didn't have handcuffs: they didn't usually take prisoners. Instead, they just held on and tossed their heads like animals that had smelled something they didn't like. There was a lot of discussion in their language going on. Six looked around for a weapon she could steal.

Another set of Elites were surrounding Jorge, restraining his hands and bearing down on his shoulders. Six fought down both the various ways she could think of to get out of this and the question of why they weren't dead. Covenant didn't take prisoners. Common belief was that it was dishonorable according to their complex merit system. But then, Elites didn't usually spend a lot of time running away from their own people while in human company either. Maybe Relk was behind this.

The crowd of Elites pushed her toward a purple-lacquered corridor, another five aliens following with Jorge. A distant rumbling sound seemed to indicate the ship starting to move. Six made eye contact with Jorge. Both his weapon and backpack had been taken from him. For a moment, Six thought angrily about the loss of her knife. Jorge looked relaxed, though, almost as if he were walking to the mess hall back with Noble Team. Six looked back at the corridor ahead of her, trusting her mask to do all the intimidation she needed to do here.

The ship was smaller than the Solace but a decent-sized living space in its own right. Her captors passed a few closed doors before turning to go into a brig with two energy-shielded cells facing one another. The hallway between them was only about six feet wide. After some discussion and gnashing of teeth, the Elites pushed both Spartans into one cell. Six could see the control panel for the cells, a stack of lacquer near the hallway wreathed with holographic displays in vivid colors. A hologram in the shape of a stylized Elite with the long body and flowing mane of a Chinese dragon hovered over it for a moment: Six assumed this to be the ship's AI.

The Elites slapped the energy shield down on the cell and glowered. They seemed to want to say something, but couldn't: the language and the plasma were the barriers. The Spartans stared back up at them. When they turned and left. Six started banging on the wall, trying to get through, trying to find where the plasma field was coming from.

* * *

Relk rode a gravlift with the shipmaster of Ascendant Desolation, the small drop ship that had found him. Accompanying them was a subaltern, a devotee of the Prophets specifically educated to know their rules and ways. He couldn't take his eyes off the crystal Relk held in his arms. No one had told Relk to get rid of the crystal once he'd grabbed it: in fact, they all looked a bit afraid of it.

People looking at him like they were afraid of him was a new thing for Relk.

He and the shipmaster watched as the unconscious Spartans floated up other gravlifts. The silence was spiky.

Relk quietly asked, "What's going to happen to them?"

The shipmaster's reply was instant. "Don't talk to me, betrayer. I've heard what you've done. And you smell like cave. It's bad enough having an Arbiter's name attached to this planet...but now someone who's consorted with humans, too?"

Relk hung his head. The subaltern looked between the two other Sangheili with wide eyes. "My pardon, exalted shipmaster, but I think we need to take into consideration that this...what was your name?"

"Me?" said Relk.

"Yes."

"Relk 'Forsovai."

"...this 'Forsovai has been chosen by the Forerunners. He found the sacred object that two armies have been warring for."

Relk thought, desperately, I tripped over it in a dark cave. However, desperation was a good state of mind in which he could be able to know not to say things like that. He also couldn't fail to notice that no one addressed him by, or seemed to care about, his rank title. That was probably one of the things he was going to have to kiss goodbye very soon.

The shipmaster wasn't having any of it anyway. "His name is on the feed as a deserter. You could have had an honorable death aboard the Solace, 'Forsovai. Instead, you ran away."

The plain words, spat out with a good deal of emphasis, set Relk's shame right down on him. Coward was the worst thing you could call a Sangheili. The Forerunners hadn't created them to run away.

"And then you joined up with humans." The shipmaster shook his head as if trying to dispel even the thought of why someone would do that. "I haven't killed you right now only because the Forerunners seem to have chosen you to find this valuable object. If it is impious of me to wish otherwise..."

Apparently it was, because the subaltern looked at the shipmaster sharply and he shut up.

The three of them floated into the ship. Relk wouldn't have said before that he missed Sangheili architecture, but the sight of the walls, any walls, felt comfortably familiar to him. Even the curves just seemed...nice. He tried not to think about the fact that walking back into his familiar world meant possibly walking into a death sentence for treachery.

The humans must have been brought into another troop bay nearby, because Relk couldn't see them anywhere.

The shipmaster immediately started stomping off, and when the subaltern followed and surreptitiously placed Relk between the two of them, Relk had to follow. The shipmaster looked back at him with a glare. "Why don't we go see how your friends are getting on?"

Relk couldn't exactly protest. The shipmaster led him through more corridors. He was still holding the crystal, which had started to get heavy. It wasn't glowing any more, and any danger from it had seemed to die down...probably because it knew it was in the proper hands now. Guards appeared from either side, surrounding both Relk and the subaltern, presumably for the latter's protection from the former. Acolytes of the subaltern showed up too, and Relk was directed to give the crystal to them. He did. They'd use it as part of an alter or something...and he could rest his arms.

They emerged at a vantage point above a large staging area, and Relk could see the Spartans, easily visible because of Six's bright orange armor, being led away into a hallway right underneath him. The shipmaster's immediate subordinate, an Ultra also identifiable by his bright silver color, had been standing in the center of the large room with his arms folded. The large weapon Jorge usually held had been left at his feet as a trophy. He looked up, found the shipmaster, and headed for a ramp up to the balcony. As they waited for him to come close enough to speak, Relk looked at his guards. Some of them looked younger than he was. They stared with uniformly angry expressions.

When the mate arrived, Relk saw that he was a short Sangheili, not nearly as tall as Relk, with bright blue flecks in his eyes. The sword hilt stuck to his thigh indicated that he would have the 'ai' honorific at the end of his name, but that's where Relk's information about him ended. "This has been the strangest capture ever, of all time," the Ultra began. "They're just standing there, allowing us to put them in the holds. Why are they doing that?"

The subaltern looked completely confused. Relk found himself in the rare position of being both calmer and more informed than someone around him. That didn't mean he could keep the nervous tremor out of his voice. "Maybe they want to be ambassadors?"

"To us or to the Forerunners?" the shipmaster asked with sincere curiosity.

"To us." Relk could answer that one easily. He knew that Jorge would want to make peace between the species if he had the chance, especially after their journey together. Also, it was really nice to just be able to talk in a language he was fluent in and his was desperate to say anything that would keep him alive. "The Forerunners do not concern them."

"But they were after the crystal."

"They were after it because they knew we were after it. It was a resource to them, like water."

"Odd." The shipmaster could have been looking at a previously unknown species of plant. "It seems that you know a lot about the mindset of these demons. You stayed with them long enough. Weren't you planning to gut them in their sleep at some point?"

"I'm not sure sure they're actually demons...technically. Sir. Also there were a lot of them."

"Their very secular mindset means that they are different from us, maybe irrevocably."

The subaltern spoke up, which Relk was grateful for. It meant he didn't have to wonder when the shipmaster was going to order the guards to start clubbing him. "That does not mean that 'Forsovai has changed his mindset. Has he?"

Relk said, "No. I still believe in the Forerunners." This was completely true. It wasn't like the Spartans had tried to convert him to whatever they believed in. It was obvious that the Forerunners had existed. They'd left crystals and caves.

The subaltern said, "Someone with close knowledge of the humans could be useful to us." He locked gazes with the shipmaster, then turned to Relk. "Would you be willing to help out?"

"I'm, I'm not..." instead of 'cut out for this' or 'brave' or 'really all that magical', Relk said, "sure."

"Look," said the shipmaster. "Their mindset has affected him. He's a traitor. Put him in a cell next to the demons. Maybe they'll tear each other apart."

The guards grabbed Relk's arms. Another patted him down for weapons, but didn't find any and gave a snort of disapproval. Relk wasn't sure whether the guard was looking for an excuse to beat him or just thought that a swordmaster not having a sword was yet another mark of shame on his nearly obscured record. As if in an afterthought, the shipmaster started talking on his comm to someone, telling them to prepare a space for Relk somewhere besides the brig.

Relk started babbling. Maybe there was some hope in what the subaltern said. He could help out. He'd tell the shipmaster what he knew about humans. He knew that they didn't really care about honor, which sounded pretty great right now. He knew some things about their weaponry and, well, their word games. But he was nervous, and instead of an efficient list of the services he could provide to the intelligence community, his reply came out as : "Maybe, but-I mean, you said they were irrevocably different. That means that you plan on ...voking...them...ah, making them less different, at some point? Is that the aim of the Zealots?"

The shipmaster rounded on him, big and dark. "It's not your place to say what our aim is any more."

And with that, Relk felt, he was shut out of Sangheili society. He didn't have honor. The subaltern was too cowed to say anything else. Somebody else would figure out what the crystal was and Relk would rot in a cell...again.

He stared at the floor.

He could try to die honorably, fighting his way out of here, but...he just really didn't want to get hurt, which was a shame unto itself. Frozen with indecision, Relk went along with it as the guards started pushing him along. He was only alive at this point because they thought they might get information out of him. Sangheili had to show unusual restraint in this war...

The subaltern, backed by some more acolytes who told him that the crystal was safely stowed, spoke up. "The crystalline device found in the cave is incredible. One of the first unique pieces of Forerunner tech we've found in hundreds of years. Part of it does appear to be missing - one facet was left behind in the cave. It fell off in the fight."

"Well, go pick it up." The shipmaster didn't even look at him.

Relk tried to remember when the piece of the crystal had fallen off. Things were sortof a blur after Six had hung onto him.

The shipmaster said, "We will retrieve it. We are still engaged down there. The rest of the demons will be taken care of."

The female scientist and the rest of the Spartans were still in the caves somewhere. Relk wondered what would happen to them and whether they would pick up the part of the crystal he had left behind, but that didn't really matter to him right now. And besides, the crystal seemed to change its properties based on who was holding it or what it felt it wanted to do at the moment. The future was uncertain for everybody. His own future was just the most important to him.

"That part of the crystal is a matter for the ground commander now." The shipmaster looked at his Ultra, who nodded in a 'I'm going to take care of this' kind of manner. "That has nothing to do with the fact that I've now got this whelp on my hands." He looked back at Relk, eyes narrowed. Relk shivered.

"Well, he did lead us to the crystal," the subaltern said quietly.

They had arrived at a door. This wasn't even a proper brig, equipped with a force field and sundry security measures: it was pretty much just a closet. It was a small ship and they might not have wanted him conspiring with the humans. (Relk wasn't even sure what he would do if he saw Six and Jorge right now. Actually offer to work for their side if they got him out of here, or start on a multi-language diatribe about how much he hated them and this was all Jorge's fault?) Someone had cleared out everything in the closet except for what looked like a Grunt's deck-polishing cloth in preparation for him. The shipmaster wouldn't give Relk the honor of being housed like someone who was dangerous. Honestly, Relk couldn't blame him.

It looked like the contingent of guards was going to stay, though. One of them shoved him against the door before opening it and pushing him inside. Relk was feeling more aches than he'd known he had, and a couple new ones started. He got one good look at the shipmaster before the guard closed the door.

The shipmaster seemed to take the subaltern's words into consideration. He growled. "He'll get what he deserves."

* * *

It took a lot to break Six but there was this unnatural antsiness to her now. It was just injustice that she had come out of a cave just to be stuck in a cell. She wanted to run. She tried to pull at the edges of the walls with her fingers, clawing and grasping and cursing the slick surface of her gloves.

Jorge put a hand on her shoulder. "Wait. Wait."

Six stopped, looked back.

He said, "We aren't going to get anywhere if we break out while the ship's still moving." He was looking out past the force field, not quite at the AI. His voice was low and distant, in that tactical mindset like he got when looking out at Reach. Here they weren't fighting through farmers' fields, but he still sounded that same way.

Six could feel the truth of what he said: the ship's engines were rumbling under her feet. It was a Covenant corvette, small enough to be inserted into atmosphere but larger than the Phantoms or other troops carriers that were pretty much just one large room inside. She remembered the schematics from her Falcon team. This ship was either moving along under Reach's atmosphere or going higher to get to slipspace, and from the loud noise of the engines it was the latter. If they tried to escape now they'd just end up in a ship that even Six didn't know how to drive.

"We just need to wait. Stay ready. Something will happen-"

"That's your solution?" Six wanted to scream. she wanted to dig through the force field, dig under it or climb over it or run through it, let her skin turn to boils and ash from the close contact to the plasma. "They're probably going to kill us. How long can we just hang out?"

"Trust me," he said, and he sounded so stoic-so accepting-Six wanted to rip his helmet off and find out if there was any fear in there that he would speak in her language.

"I have been trusting you," she said, "and it got me stuck in a cave for a week." She didn't smile when she said it. not that it mattered much, what with the helmet...nothing but faceless shapes, all of them, drones with personalities piped in after the fact. He had different chemicals from her. He wasn't programmed to love properly. Why was it so hard to draw him out?

It wasn't that she wanted him to trust her and follow her in everything, just like she wouldn't want to follow him blindly. There just needed to be more communication.

She thought, "We need to be soldiers. We can't wait around for orders because there aren't any coming..." and you aren't going to give them, she thought but didn't say. He'd always been solid ground for her, but now they needed to jump and he couldn't stay behind with his feet on the deck. He folded his arms, looked out through the swirling plasma.

They both looked up as Elite footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. Six wondered whether it would be Relk, but then saw three hulking Elites in armor colors that were new to her. The all had very dark skin, less bluish than Relks, as if their skin was thicker. The foremost one was holding the blue crystal that had been the cause of all this.

Six and Jorge retreated from the front of the cell as the aliens approached, even though they were only allowed a few feet of space. The Elites turned their heads like monsters with mouths full of something that turned out to be just more mouth.

Whatever they were saying, they didn't seem to think the Spartans needed to understand it. All their words were addressed to the three of them and maybe to the crystal as they bobbed it around. The Elite that Six started to think of as the head honcho, priest, or exorcist kept gesturing with the crystal and repeating things like they were prayers.

Jorge said, "Look at that. They're trying to decide how holy we are."

She looked at him, raised an eyebrow. "Still so calm."

"I'm ready to rip their heads off if they come any closer. It's just not nice to say so in a language they can understand."

The eyebrow went further. "Like you speaking Hungarian to me?"

Might as well have a proper human argument if there were aliens doing some kind of religious ritual in front of you and it didn't seem to require you to be paying attention.

Jorge looked down at her. She could tell from the feed in his helmet cam that he was still keeping an eye on the Elites. "That was a long time ago, Six. That was before."

"Before the Solace?"

"Before I decided it was worth dying for you." He said it calmly. It shocked her a little. She thought that maybe the calm wasn't a problem, it was just the way he was (and the way he was, he cared for her.) She could adopt his calm, even though she was worried about how they would get out of here and why the Elites were even keeping them alive. Six jumped feet-first into emotions and battlefields and maybe that was why the calmness had annoyed her. She reached out and wrapped her hand around Jorge's even though the plate on the back of his hand kept her from getting a good grip. Even Elites could probably figure out that language. He pressed his fingers in tightly around hers and watched the show in front of them.

Whatever conclusions he had come to didn't seem to please the head honcho. He gestured angrily to the guards around him, and they rounded on the Spartans with weapons raised.

The force field went down. Six lunged forward, but the Elite guards were all around her in seconds. Her hand swung, happened to find a sword handle, heavy and cold like crystal. It wasn't meant for hands the size of hers but the Elite was bending down like to bite her, and the sword was right there. It had a button to press. How hard could that be?

The blade speared the Elite through the leg. The guard roared, and Six cut through the rest of its leg. Jorge was struggling with the other Elites. Six blinked, tagging the end of the hall on her HUD as their mission objective. The message was clear: we need to get out of here. The head Elite was still hanging back.

The sword was a beautiful thing, light as a feather but somehow balanced. It was made of what was surely the plasma ubiquitous to Covenant technology, but looked like pure light, sky-blue and sparkling. She carved through two Elites with one swing before the others started shooting. A loud crack was Jorge breaking an Elite's arm. Six pushed another arm aside in an effort to lunge at the aliens' leader and felt two impacts hit her back. Her shield strength plummeted but she could tell by the sounds behind her that Jorge was smashing someone against a wall. Six grabbed the leader by the throat. He panicked, beating at her arms and shoulders in smacks that would have hurt her if she hadn't been armored. As it was they just cleared the way to his throat. Even Elite priests kept guns at their sides. He went for it, and Six pinned him to the wall on the sword. The crystal fragment thunked on the floor.

Jorge was already headed for the end of the hall.

They fought their way through the ship, navigating by memory and by which direction the aliens were coming from. It wasn't a large ship, so the remaining Elite crew threw a steadily dwindling supply of Grunts at them with gusto. Six kept the sword and found that she liked it, the almost unbelievable way one slash peeled a Grunt's armored shell open. Jorge had captured a plasma rifle that looked like a small, angry animal skull, its mouth breathing green fire.

When they reached the troop bay, only one Elite and three Grunts were guarding the translucent field in the floor where the gravlift originated. The Elite held a sword and had Jorge's turret gun on its back. Six didn't think she could take an Elite in a swordfight, not when she was slashing around based mostly on knife-fighting techniques and common sense. She switched to a plasma pistol she'd picked up from a Grunt, the sword magnetizing to her leg as easily as it had to the Elite's. Her thigh armor was still cracked and uneven.

Jorge broken into a run across the large room. Six shouted, "Activate the gravlift!" as the Grunts rushed toward her.

Through the purple sheen of the force field she could see grass and mountains below. The ship hadn't gone into space yet: it hadn't even passed into the clouds. Maybe the Covenant were refitting human bases and this ship had been headed toward one. Either way, it meant the Spartans could escape to the ground.

She shot two Grunts before they got to her, rupturing the air packs on their backs. Another lobbed a grenade. It stuck to the floor next to Six's feet, and she jumped over it just before it exploded into blue fire behind her. She saw Jorge slap a holographic display next to the gravlift and look down into the diamondy surface of the field as it started shimmering even more, dust particles floating downward. He looked back at her, then jumped.

Six followed.


	26. Home

**XXVI.**

Six jumped feet-first into the gravlift and felt its pull start to gently move her down into the air. Since the ship was still moving the gravlift was pushing at trees and grass, the bottom of it varying in height as it passed over hills and valleys. Wind buffeted at Six as she descended fast with Jorge below her. She looked up and saw the Elite as a distant, long-necked gray splotch. In a flash she knew what it was going to do: it was smart. Still three stories above the ground, she shouted, "It's reversing the gravlift! Jump!"

She kicked, swimming through the gravity field. She wasn't sure it would work, but it did. Before she could think about it too much, she reached a hand out of the force field ad immediately dropped into the open sky. The world blurred past. She hit a treetop, branches snapping around her as she wrapped her arms around her head and drew up her knees. Something smacked her shoulder and nearly flipped her over: other branches pummeled her back and legs. The world blurred by in green and brown and the flashing red bar of her shield dying. The branches couldn't whip at her inside her armor, so it was a strange sensation to feel only the impacts but no pain. Each smack from a branch went shivering through her body. She closed her eyes as the buffeting got worse.

The last smack was a tangle of large branches, and then she hit the ground and rolled. She winced as she felt her shoulders thump against the curved inside of her armor. It turned into a scowl as she got to her feet and staggered two steps, vision still blurry, and reached for the nearest thing that could hold her up. The ground was covered with springy grass, and the shade of the trees after the full sunlight above the clouds was almost like night. She didn't find anything to hold on to, so her next step brought her to her knees again and she rolled onto her belly to try and at least spread the discomfort evenly.

In her field of vision her armored forearms were covered with dirt and leaves. She lay there for two long breaths, blinking and flexing her limbs. Nothing was broken: everything was going to be bruised and hurting tomorrow. The large, square plates of her gauntlets had dirt caked to every side, rounding the corners, and the high peaks of her shoulder armor probably looked the same. She sat up and reached around to pat at her shoulders and see if she'd lost any plates. Wet dirt flaked away under her hands, but nothing was broken.

She looked up, still processing how far she'd fallen. Even her teeth felt like they'd been rattled. The Spartans had landed in a thick forest of pines and deciduous trees, most of the undergrowth choked away by the thick leaves. Instead, small twigs fallen from the trees littered the ground. Six squinted to find the almost-translucent jet trails of a Covenant vessel overhead, but too much of the sky was obscured. It was a reassuring lot of cover.

Where was Jorge? Six patted her side, reassured that the captured energy sword was still attached to her hip as if by magic, and set out to look for him.  
His life signs led her to the bottom of a tree. He was hunched over after crashing to the ground, and immediately she zeroed in on a splash of blood on his arm, thinking he must have been shot.

Jorge's red shoulder armor had been twisted and folded in the fall. Six had never been sure why he had added the thick curve of metal to the armor around his shoulders; it protected his neck but overlapped with the other parts of the standard MJOLNIR. She had wondered if he had been hurt before and added the new plates to make up for a weakness. It wasn't an obvious one. However, there was something intriguing about searching for weakness in him.

The attempt at protection, though, had backfired this time. Six could see that the red plate had not only been damaged in the fall but also had pushed down, hit Jorge's arm, and forced the shoulder plate to twist as well, pressing into his arm. She could see a stain of blood.

"You're hurt." She knelt down to examine the wound even as her HUD lit up with his stats: he was losing blood but his heart rate was barely elevated and his energy shields were strong. The damage had come from the armor itself. Six helped him up and they began to hurry through the trees, hearing the Covenant ship roar by overhead without pausing to stop. It might circle back around, it might call reinforcements, or it might not need to do any of those things since the planet was so thick with aliens that any runaways were bound to run into more troops eventually...none of these possibilities were pleasant. The air smelled like churned-up dirt.

Jorge slung his arm around her shoulders. Noises in the distance sounded like construction trunk tires crunching over gravel, and all the digging things that could make that earthy smell. It was probably Covenant, making roads out of their own vitrified battlefields. Six held on to a nub of metal on Jorge's back and took the weight he gave her. It wasn't much: he was still walking strong and determined, both of them heading into the deepest, murkiest patch of forest they could find.

She had an eye-level view of where his shoulder pauldron had been crunched against his arm in the fall. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Let's find cover. Somewhere we can disguise heat signatures would be best."

The fact that he hadn't answered her question wasn't lost on her, but that was okay: it wasn't exactly a question that was easy to answer. She had wanted to fill the silence. She had wanted to hear the word _okay_ spoken out loud, like a prediction.

The wind was rattling the treetops, but the forest's bird sounds were missing. They'd been chased away by the ships running their noisy, alien engines overhead. Moa, song birds, and even large predators like guta got set on edge by war, but the Covenant weren't killing birds. Six wondered whether migration would go as planned as fall went on, or what new landscapes the birds would have to get used to flying over.

Jorge spoke as if she had said something that needed reassuring. "The ship isn't coming after us."

"Yeah. Either the crew was too off-guard to follow us, or they've got more important things to do."

"More important than a couple of Spartans wandering their glass planet?"

"Maybe."

"That'll be lucky for us," he said wearily.

Six kept picking the most shadowed parts of the forest to trek through, but Jorge seemed to tire from stepping over fallen branches and uneven ground, or from the undergrowth that must be jarring his arm as it shifted against the armor. He got quiet and limper, leaning against her more forcefully and more often as the terrain got rougher and the ground started to slope down. Six tried to distract him. "Did you see where Relk went?"

"No."

"He could be on our side."

"I don't know."

"He could." She tried to be positive, even as she had to append, "although I did hold him hostage."

"Look. Is that a house?" He looked up. Between the trees, Six could see both a white-paneled wall and a thin, gray, column of smoke.

She said, "It's either on fire or occupied."

"If it's already been cleared out, we might be able to stay."

Six didn't like the sound of 'cleared out'. Not with the Covenant everywhere. There were no life signs on her radar, but there wouldn't be if whoever lived behind those walls was neither an alien nor a UNSC combatant tagged with a neural implant. She wanted to think the smoke might be a welcoming, warm fire (as unusual that would be even in rural Reach, it still conjured up images of a cozy home) but that was very unlikely with all the alien ships overhead. She said, "I hope that's grandma putting a kettle on, but we should circle around to make sure."

His reply was an acquiescing grunt.

Six's hopes were as far-fetched as she'd thought. The two Spartans rounded a thick stand of trees to peer out at a house closely hemmed in by the forest. The structure looked undamaged, but a pile of clothes and bones in a blackened circle in the yard revealed the cause of the flames. Beyond the pyre and through fragmented gaps in the trees Six could see tilled lowlands, ranks of crops that would soon ripen of their own accord. A silver glare in the distance might have been another patch of glassed ground.

"That's strange." Jorge moved closer to the pyre, scuffing the ground. "Covenant wouldn't cremate human bodies."

"They didn't." She saw that another body was propped up against the door with a shotgun in his lap. He looked to have died some hours ago.

Jorge touched the man's face but spoke to Six. "Put out that fire."

While she did, digging through the crumbly, brown-black dirt with the squared-off sides of her cleft boot and kicking it over the smoke and the bones, Jorge moved the body. It lay in the grass near the edge of the woods while the Spartans ducked inside the house.

The dead man had left the door unlocked. Six and Jorge entered a sparse, white-walled kitchen with a wooden table and the usual devices. The occasional personal touch - pictures on the fridge, a bunch of drying flowers hanging on one wall - showed that the house had belonged to a family. Six poked into the two doors leading out, one to a living room and one to a stairwell. "Hello? This is the UNSC. Anybody in here?", she bellowed. There was just silence.

Jorge was holding his injured arm, the blood turning black and blending into a black blob beneath his glove. "Check upstairs. I'll watch the door."

There were no life signs, but she headed up anyway, one hand on the sword hilt. The stairwell was narrow: if she activated the sword in the wrong direction it would punch through a wall. "I don't think there'll be Elites going through the sock drawers."

"Could be. We don't know what resources they need..." The end of his sentence became a tired sigh, and she heard him sit down. "Go ahead, Six. I'll wait."

She bit her lip, worrying at the skin. She peered into three rooms: two bedrooms and a small bathroom. It was forest in every direction outside, although the silver place that had looked like glasslands was revealed to be a city skyline to the west.

When she came downstairs, Jorge was sitting on the floor with one knee up, looking at his wounded arm. Six kneeled beside him. The shoulder armor had punctured both his under-armor and the skin, and Jorge had to work to pick pieces of cloth out of the wound. The red neck plate was jammed up against the shoulder pauldron, and Six got her hands around the red plate to try to unjam it. Jorge said, "It's clear of my arm if you're just going to snap it off. We might have to."

She gripped the plate and wrenched it to the sides. She wasn't sure she could snap a couple inches of metal, but it was just going to prevent him from replacing the pauldron safely if she didn't. There was a surge of pressure on her arms, she leaned into it, and the metal cracked, coming apart in one misshapen piece. Six smiled. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Jorge rumbled, patting at the wound again.

"I didn't think I could do that." Six enjoyed the feeling for a moment before standing and turning to investigate the contents of the kitchen. She looked up at the strip lights glowing peacefully behind decorative glass plates on the ceiling.

Jorge said, "This is a kiva."

"What?"

"That's what they call these homesteads. We walked through a lot of them with Noble. It'll have a self-sustaining generator, most likely. The Covenant haven't touched it."

"It doesn't look like they did much more than try to get in. And then give up on getting in. I don't know why." She looked in cabinets. Dried fruit in wicker baskets sat next to name-brand canned soups.

"Maybe they only wanted the farmer dead. It's not his fault he owned land here, but they'll want to take it any way. If only to write their symbols on it."

She closed the cabinet, opened another one. This one housed the first-aid supplies. Bandaids, thick, red cough syrups, children's vitamins in bright colors. "Do you think it's safe to keep using it?"

"We're going to find out."

"Okay. Here." She knelt beside him and started wrapping a bandage around the cleaned wound, brushing away bits of dusty residue from the metal she'd snapped.

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. A few heartbeats later he, said, quietly, "I don't understand."

"Don't understand what?" She looked up and tipped her head in confusion.

"Feelings," he muttered.

"What feelings?" Six said flatly. "I'm fixing your arm." She felt uncharacteristically reluctant to open up, like an emotion too big had finally overwhelmed her ability to embrace it. Talking about it might make it go away, and she wasn't sure whether that would be good or not. Halsey had programmed the Spartan-IIs with chemicals and genes, and maybe part of the reason Six didn't like the doctor was her potential ability to take Jorge's feelings away. Her own were definitely present, though: now that she was thinking about it, she felt her cheeks start to prickle. If this was what a blush felt like, it was annoying as heck not to know whether it was visible or not.

Jorge said, "I think we need to talk about this relationship. Halsey didn't make us for feelings like this."

"I don't want to talk about her." Six pulled the bandage tight around the patchy, pale skin of Jorge's arm. "There. You're as fixed as you're going to get without, you know, an actual medic." She stood up, but he put a hand on her arm.

"Thank you."

The soft uncertainty in his eyes repelled her. He had to accept their relationship or not, instead of wavering back and forth like a moa in front of a Warthog. She loved him because he had always been certain of things.

She looked down. "We've got to decide. We're either machines or people, Jorge. If we're machines let's patch up our feelings and go be coordinates. But that's not what's brought us this far. We've got no orders, no commanding officer, a dead guy in the lawn, and I mostly want to live so that you can too. So let's be people. Let's win this war."

She stopped, drained of her resources.

He took her hand, stood up, and got his left arm around her. They stood looking between the slats and the curtains out the window toward the murky cloud and forested mountains outside. There was a little glint of silver in the distance where she could see the city towers, probably abandoned like the ones Noble Team had flown over a few weeks ago. Undoubtedly they were empty.

Six said, "And this is the part where the dramatic music starts." Her optimism had returned. "Let's see what we can salvage from the house. You okay?"

"Don't ask me to lift any Warthogs. Otherwise, I can take care of things."

"We'll be lucky if we find a Warthog." She moved away from him, looking in the lower cabinets she hadn't checked before.

He said, "We'll be lucky if we find a good backpack."

They took a tour of the house. Its owners wouldn't need their supplies again. With this in mind Six found a duffel bag, its thick cloth an inconveniently bright blue, and stuffed it with canned food. The Spartans could crush aluminum in order to open the cans out in the field, but it would be messy. They could cut it with the Covenant sword...

Jorge handed her a finger-sized can opener as she was standing in the kitchen thinking about how to cause the least mess with the brute force method.  
"Oh." she smiled. "That'll work."

He had cracked open a can of tomatoes, and now placed it on the table. Slimy vegetables in water weren't fine cuisine, but after weeks of MREs even the juicy smell made Six's mouth water. She got her helmet off fast and fished forks out of one of the drawers.

She sat and speared a tomato. The wooden chair creaked under the weight of the armor, so she stood up, realizing that Jorge had never sat down for the same reason. He ate from the same can, with his helmet and a pile of napkins next to him. For a while there was silence as they ate.

Her wounded leg started to ache, and when Jorge sat down on the floor she followed and brought the tomato can with her. When the food began to feel syrupy and heavy in her stomach she stopped, flicked tomato juice off the fork, and leaned back. "We're not in a cave any more," she said with a laugh, and was finally, with her full belly and a human home around her, relieved.

Jorge nodded, propped his fork against the can on the floor. She liked the stoicism with which he met her joy. He nodded. "We can stay here for the night if we don't draw too much attention when it gets dark."

Six stood and paced the room again, this time noting more of the family's personal touches: an oven mitt with a chicken on it, a large glass diamond hanging from the curtain rod over the sink to catch the sun, holos in frames. Her helmet, sitting n the table, looked too big, too high-tech, and too gaudily, assertively orange to belong in the house.

Jorge stood and put the can in the sink. Immediately after the clunk of it hitting the bottom, he said, "Hear that?"

She went still. "What?"

They listened. Six shifted over to her helmet and put her hand on the curved top. Was that the noise of a Grunt snuffling outside, or Elite footsteps? Six thought about how the house had walls and foods and beds, and didn't want to leave.

Jorge, who was further from his own helmet, muttered. "Check your radar."

Six put her helmet on with just the soft sound of the rim hitting the table. The hiss as she connected it to her neck seals was louder, but she knew from experience that only she could hear that.

She said, "There's two Covvies, probably twenty meters from the house, moving slow." Neither she nor Jorge were in direct line of sight from the window, although Six was with the door. "They're moving away."

She watched until the patrolling, sightseeing, or consecrating aliens were gone. "I'll take the first watch."

Jorge moved restlessly around the kitchen, occasionally pausing to examine an object like Six had. He disappeared into the living room and came out with an English-language newspaper: Six had seen a pile of them in a basket next to the couch. It was local, made on real newsprint, with headlines like 'Visegrad under attack' and 'gross planetary product increases'. She sat down and read beside him. There was an unspoken agreement that they could go no further today, since they'd been gifted with a relatively safe oasis, but the house was certainly not guaranteed to be safe for long. It would be another sleep-in-armor kind of night. (There were going to be health issues if this kept up much longer, but Six didn't want to think about that.)

They read the paper and then he brought all of the couch cushions into the kitchen and lay on them while Six sat by the door. She tossed the little blue sword hilt back and forth. She thought about Noble Team and Red Team, and her second-to-last CO, Evan Stern. She wondered where she and Jorge should go next, now that the UNSC was gone from Reach.

When her watch ended in the middle of the night she curled up on the couch cushions and idly watched Jorge's silhouette at the door until she fell asleep.

The first thing she heard when she woke up sounded like Grunts screaming.


	27. Glass

**XXVII.**

Six rolled onto her hands and knees and stood up fast. Her hair flicked at her eyes. The house was cold and clear in the morning light. The door stood open: Jorge was standing in the entrance to the house with the dead man's shotgun in his hands, its barrel held up to the cheek of his mask. Aiming for something.

By the time she crossed the room Six was awake enough to think that there were worse things to wake up to; when she put her own helmet on she started a more critical assessment. A Grunt ran by near the trees, almost kicking over the makeshift, ashy grave Jorge had made for the home's last defender. Six moved up beside Jorge, not liking to be without a ranged weapon.

"What's going on?"

"There's a human out there," Jorge mused, sounding quizzical. "And Grunts chasing 'im. Someone threw a stone at the house."

"And I slept through it." Six shook her head. She should have been more aware.

Jorge disregarded that. "This gun has six bullets left."

"Oh." That was a more pressing problem.

Six could see the alien life-signs milling about at the other side of the yard, but no green ones. "You said you saw humans?"

"Just one."

"Roger that," she muttered, scanning the trees.

"And I haven't seen any species beside Grunts. That's odd."

They might not need anything else to kill civilians, she thought grimly. Another Grunt brushed through the trees, and Jorge swung the gun around. Dark shapes with unavoidable lights on their rounded backs showed where the Grunts tried unsuccessfully to move undetected under the cover of the forest. Green lights marked where they carried the standard-issue plasma pistol. Six looked covetously at their weapons.

Humans were impossible to track without UNSC tags, but Six clearly heard the little footsteps coming from the back of the house. Two Grunts sprinted across the lawn toward them, and the humans sped up too.

Six shouted, "UNSC! Get inside!"

Jorge shot once and hit the slower Grunt, which jumped and spidered, dead, into the dirt. Six leapt out of cover to intercept the second one.

Then a lot of things happened at once. The remaining Grunt shot a sparking green bolt that flashed past Six and hit the taller human full in the chest just as she emerged around the corner. Both humans were wearing a mishmash of street clothes and what looked like hunting gear, all in shades of black.

Six took a bullet for the other human, a quarter of her shield disappearing. The second human was skinny and shapeless under her gear, but lanky. She picked up her companion surprisingly quickly and slung her in her arms, screaming the whole time.

Six said, "We're here to help you!" but the survivor, looking at her with little-girl eyes and holding what might be her mother in her arms, spooked. She dashed around the side of the house again, leaving Six with only a very clear impression of the narrow, black toe of her boot digging into the dirt.

Another shot hit Six's shield, and she spun around. The Grunt waved its arms and chittered as if it thought she wasn't paying it enough attention.

She activated her sword.

The Grunt started running. Five more hustled out of the trees, and Six and Jorge advanced across the lawn toward them. Plasma splashed off their shields and armor but they kept pressing forward, Jorge pumping the shotgun. Six caught up to her Grunt and sliced its head and most of one arm off. The plasma blade met the least resistance. This is for that woman, she thought. This is for Reach. She glanced aside in fear as Jorge was hit on the chest with a green bolt that clashed with the gold of his shield. The cut on his arm was still only protected with the bandage from the medicine cabinet inside the house. Luckily, the Grunt that he was facing up against either hadn't noticed that or couldn't aim.

Six captured her Grunt's plasma pistol as she passed, and shot two of its friends in quick succession, the sword still glowing in her other hand. The shotgun hit three more in a steady rhythm, and then there were none.

Jorge scooped up a plasma pistol, careful not to disturb the ashes from the fire the Grunts had trodden on. The rounded weapon looked small in his hand.

Immediately he turned to look for the human survivors. "Where are they."

"They went behind the house. it looked like a mother and teenage daughter."

"Hmm."

They circled the house to the place the survivor had been last seen, but the people were gone. Torn-up grass indicated both that they had headed into the forest, and that the lanky girl was wearing conspicuous, unprofessional boots. Six looked into the forest. "We could follow them."

Jorge nodded. "We can try to help them out."

"I'm amazed they're still alive. It's great."

"People survive, Six. Try to kill them and they just try to live harder."

The Spartans headed back inside the house. It was dark in there compared to the nine-o-clock sun outside, and Six felt her eyes adjust before her helmet camera did. Jorge picked up the blue duffel bag full of cans and looked - rather forlornly, Six thought - at the couch cushions. Six looked again at the family pictures on the fridge, noticing that most of the people had thick brown hair. She tried to find another unifying feature between them: maybe the shape of the lips, or the distinctly deep line between nose and mouth.

When you lived with people who nearly all wore helmets, telling them apart when their faces were bare became pretty easy. There was so much variety that MJOLNIR didn't manufacture.

She sad, "I wonder if those people were from this family. They were coming here for a reason."

"Might be. I saw the Grunts first; the people knew how to be quiet. They might just have been looking for supplies."

"It almost looked like they were wearing uniforms. There could be a group."

"I hope so." Jorge slung the strap of the duffel bag over his right shoulder. "Then we'll be better off when trying to protect them." He put the old shotgun down on the kitchen table. "The next one looking for a safe place might need this."

"How many bullets does it have left?"

"Two."

"Not enough for the Covenant to do much damage to us."

They hesitated at the doorway, not wanting to leave the relative safety of the house. Six wanted to ask Jorge whether he thought he'd grown up in a house like this, but he'd said before that he couldn't remember his childhood. It didn't matter now anyway. That was the past, and now they had hostile territory to work through. It wouldn't make sense to stay at the house. They needed to find a way to get in touch with the surviving colonists, or the UNSC, or Relk. All of the human comm towers were down by now.

Thinking of homes made Six think of Noble Team, and she was struck with a strangely insistent and detailed vision of what it would have been like if all of them had come on this mission. As the commanding officer, Carter would get the bed upstairs. He would distribute the blue blankets to Kat and Emile, who would sleep on the living room floor. The couch cushions would be similarly divvied up. Jun might silently take the smaller bedroom upstairs and just as silently be allowed to keep it. But the image was so strong and sad that she felt she might get lost in it, and tried to focus on the present instead.

Six crossed the threshold.

The girl's tracks led into a section of forest behind the house, that sloped down toward the city. There were nearly as many large, gray boulders as there were trees. The tracks paralleled and then crossed a narrow, rutted trail that looked like it have been used by a four-wheeled Mongoose or some other kind of ATV. At the end of the trail were more footprints and a dark blotch of blood more like a pile than a splatter. Someone had picked the two humans up in a vehicle.

Six said, "Looks like they had friends."

"I hope." Jorge looked up and down the road.

They kept following it downhill. Although it didn't get any wider or more paved, it wove resolutely through the trees. A stream came and went between the rocks on the right. The path kept close to the stream. Six had seen many instances of farms or even small military bases on Reach being powered by wind or water. Turbine generators were efficient, quiet, and self-reliant, all important traits for colonists who weren't sure they would always be affiliated with cities built by Earth's government.

Six said, "Survivors might stick close to the river." The water could be used for cleaning people and items, and maybe for generating electricity. "They need to drink."

Ahead of her, Jorge nodded. "They do. The Mongoose came this way, but if it's gone off into the woods someone covered the tracks."

The walked in silence for about half an hour, scanning warily for any signs of life among the trees and looking for tracks. Jorge broached the silence. "When I was a kid we trained in terrain like this. We got used to what unstable ground looked like, what sort of animals lived here, that sort of thing. One other guy had been born here. Once we talked about how it made sense to be learning to fight here too. Of course our planet was the one with the best soldiers.

"But we always expected to be sent off somewhere else to fight. If you'd asked me then whether the enemy would take Reach, well...I would've said that the colonies didn't have the resources. They didn't. But the Covenant neither, they were too far away. Wouldn't push this far. Other planets and our ships would stop 'em.

"It makes it harder that it's Reach. The Covenant could be going on to other places from here right now."

This was such a long speech from him and so evenly delivered that Six thought the idea for it must have been percolating for some time. She said, quietly, "I'm sorry."

Louder, she said, "But you can use that skill now. Get angry at...this." She waved toward the sky with its odd, grayish-purple jet trails.

"Hmm." After a moment he said, "Where are you from?"

"Somewhere on New Harmony."

"Hmm. How do you feel about not being able to go back there?"

Six thought about it. Carter had been talking to an officer about New Harmony the first time she had met Noble Team. She only remembered that so well because, now, she associated the words with Carter's voice instead of Kurt's. She knew that New Harmony had been razed by the Covenant. She'd been there for that. But she had been young, and the location of the planet always seemed less important than the family she had lost. "I don't know. I wish I could see my parents again but I can't."

He said "Hmm" again, and suddenly she thought that maybe the planet of Reach had become a surrogate family in his mind. Without the memory of his parents it was the only thing he could define himself by. This attack on his home felt to him just like the death of Six's parents had to her. Jorge was finally losing that which he centered himself around. She abruptly looked at him, trying to find the shock and sadness in his posture or the way his mask stared straight ahead, almost at attention. There was something going on there that she couldn't see, and she trusted that the only reason he didn't open up about it was because he didn't know it was causing him so much harm.

He kept following the train of conversation they had began. "But the loss of the planet has got to hurt you too. I remember...I mean, I heard about the attack. The Covenant don't just kill people, they make sure no one can come back to the planet they've destroyed." Six nodded. So Jorge was worried about his own planet.

She chose her words carefully. "They don't, but their blind strategy of fighting means that we'll beat them someday. We will. We'll have planets of our own to protect and no one will bother us."

It wasn't that the loss of her parents did not hurt her, but she had gone through it. All of the Spartan-IIIs had. Perhaps ironically, living with hundreds of other orphans in the UNSC training facilities on Onyx had let Six see that she wasn't alone in her problems. On bad days she had taken out her anger on the many exercises the Spartan-IIIs were set, or even on the other students. She had been able to see others going through the same thing. All of that had happened when she was a kid. The loss of her parents had integrated into her personality by now, and although it was a perpetual sad ache she had come out the other side of it.

She was starting to think that maybe the Spartan-IIs, torn even more dramatically from their parents and left with a sense of uncertainty that caused them to cling even more tightly than their successors did to each other and what sense of culture they could retrain, were the less stable ones.

It all came down to personality, though. She knew from Noble Team and her training schools that two people could go through the exact same thing and come out with completely different attitudes toward their experience and the world. She and Emile were prime examples. Presumably the other Spartan-III had gone through a similar background story as Six, but he had come out more angry and closed-off because of it, where Six had gained a positivity and resilience that Emile would consider naive. Their Spartan-II trainer, Kurt Ambrose, had not shown and signs of regret for his lost life with his family, although he never would have shown it to his recruits. He was their drill sergeant and warrant officer and den father all together. She had not met any other Spartan-IIs to compare.

Jorge nodded. Six thought that he was going to stay silent after that, but he spoke again, still looking ahead. "Maybe you're right. And until then we keep fighting for this one."

Once, the two Noble Team survivors dodged to the side of the road as a Covenant patrol in the woods showed up on their HUDs. Shortly after they got into the cover of the trees, a ship cruised by overhead. Six looked up as the purple hulk blocked out the sky. It might have been the same ship they had been on before, but she couldn't tell. The Covenant had brought so many to Reach after the first few days of the invasion that it didn't really matter.

The Covenant squad on the ground was composed only of one Elite and a handful of Grunts and Skirmishers. They skittered through the trees, leveling both nervous and calm glances at their enemy. Six wondered whether there had been an Elite commanding the group of Grunts back at the house, and the humans had killed it before she woke. She wasn't going to go out of her way to avoid them, but Jorge put a hand on her shoulder. "Wait." He looked up toward the passing ship through the gaps in the thick canopies of the trees. "I think they're retreating."

Six saw the ship's shadow pass over her. "Retreating from what?"

But he was right: the Covenant hustled out of sight, not stopping to fire on the Spartans. Six looked away from the ship in the sky to scan the forest, wondering if the Elite was going to guide his squad around an attempt an ambush or a pincer movement.

Then the ship started to fire on the city.

Six would later learn that this was part of the last wave of glassings, in which capital ships leveled areas that weren't religiously significant or already made into shining designs. For Six right now, the event was a flash of blue and orange as a plasma bolt shot from the ship and just kept shooting, burning through the buildings she could narrowly see through gaps in the trees. Light washed over the Spartans along with the crashing, thundering sound of the ship. Six and Jorge ran without stopping to discuss the decision, breaking away from the trail to climb uphill and to the right to try to find cover among the rocks. The wind picked up and buffeted against the rocks. When Six brushed against Jorge as the terrain got steeper, he hooked his arm around hers and didn't let go.

He ducked into a dirt-floored gap between two boulders. The one downhill was smaller and flatter, so they could just see over the top of it as the ship poured fire down onto the city in the valley. The sound bounced off the mountains and reverberated like thunder clapping. Six could still see the Covenant troops on her radar, also standing still and waiting for the storm to pass. The ship's laser was a column of purple energy wreathed in white tangles of electricity, kicking up dust and pieces of wreckage as it plowed through the city.

Six buried her face against Jorge's shoulder, and a moment later heard his mask touch the top of hers. She felt the wind erratically switch direction and whip against her armor, funneled by the rocks. The sky turned green, then purple. Jorge seemed to be trying to bury himself in the rocks even as she hid her face against his wounded arm. When her cameras started to darken to protect her vision she just squeezed her eyes shut, imagining Jorge doing the same.

He muttered, "It's hard to believe."

After a few long minutes, the rumbling subsided. The light followed, so that when the Spartans looked up between the rocks they could see the Covenant ship gliding away.

Six started talking because she needed to hear a human voice. "We'll make it, okay? We'll work it out. It'll be okay..."

He pulled her to her feet and hugged her. "We stick to the plan. Circle the city." The two of them separated and picked their way carefully down the slope. Rocks and tree branches had been dislodged and now lay, dangerously loose, on the ground. Six looked around for the Covenant patrol she had seen earlier and could not find them. They had probably been retreating out of the way from the bombing, alerted by their officers. Or maybe they had just come to watch...

Jorge said, "Thanks for being here."

Six shook off her anger. She wanted to take Jorge's hand, but the ground was too uneven. "No problem."

The glassing had been so complete as to singe the edge of the forest. The air was hot and weighty. One tongue of plasma had flowed into the forest and now lay in the Mongoose path like a river. The surface undulated slightly, rainbow colors swirling in the silver like oil on water. Six looked down at her reflection, clutched her plasma rifle to her chest like the drying glass was a dangerous prisoner under guard, and paid special attention to her radiation meters and where she put her feet.

Jorge kept looking up into the trees. He sounded both amazed and disgusted. "They leveled the whole skyline."

Six thought back to the other cities she had fought through. "New Alexandria must have been useful to them. Unless it's gone now too..."

"Not like this. They were angry here. Had some sort of ritual, or...there must have been a reason."

She didn't know if he had information from his travels around the universe to back that up. He sounded so angry, though, and they needed a good, healthy anger now to survive this war.

She was still curious. "They do this for their gods?"

Jorge started to move, picking his way through the clearest of the undergrowth away from the glassed path. "It's for the Forerunners."

Six followed him through the forest. "But we know - and Halsey knows, that the Forerunners were a mortal species. We found their technology and their buildings and stuff."

"Yes."

"Does the Covenant know?" Six asked.

"I don't know."

"Relk does."

"Yes," Jorge said.

"Maybe he can help us out."

Jorge nodded. Through the trees they could see the ground glittering, and the silver skeletons of skyscrapers. The group of Covenant they had noticed before showed up again on the far side of their radar, and the Spartans angled to avoid them.

* * *

Lassa'Ransau never flown in a starship before. When she first set foot on Reach both the half-buried ship in front of her that served as the local Sangheili headquarters and the big, purple drop-ships behind her were nearly as alien as they would be to a human. She knew five different weaving styles, and had planned to follow her mother into that line of work. She carried a single suitcase and wore a brown, beaded tunic and plain leg warmers over her thin, muddy-blue skinned frame.

Demons had killed her sister.

Gor'Ransau needed to be avenged, and, well, Lassa had an escort, a suitcase, and no idea where to start...

There were two guards standing at the entrance to the sunken base. Whatever kind of ship the base had been, it couldn't fly now. A large, blackened hole patched with a plasma field showed where a human ship had brought it down. The planet called Reach was cloudier than Sanghelios had been when she had left it, and colder. From what she had seen from the mishmash of burnt landscapes and forest, the work of the Forerunners was not yet done.

The shipmaster who had agreed to meet with her emerged from the base, ducking so that the golden tines on his ceremonial helmet didn't hit the top of the door. Immediately he was speaking angrily to her guards or Lassa's, almost spitting. "What is it that demands my attention now?"

Lassa immediately said, "It's me."

The shipmaster's strong neck curved as he looked down at her. "And who are you?"

She bowed a bit, as to an elderly male of her family. "Lassa'Ransau, sister to Gor'Ransau. I've come to kill demons."

The shipmaster's eyes widened as he got increasingly confused. It was almost like he was trying to hide laughter until he got his mandibles in order enough to speak evenly. "I don't recall anyone of that name. Are you...a soldier?"

"My father said I could go as long as I stopped threatening to kill his livestock if he kept me inside." She tipped her head. "Gor'Ransau must be avenged."

Now the shipmaster did show surprise. He gaped. She watched spit drip between his teeth. Then his expression turned exasperated and he waved a hand at his guards. "Get her out of here."

Two large Sangheili got her by the arms and started to pull her toward the ship. Lassa' Ransau started talking. "I see you're working on this planet. Digging it up, taming it. But you can't get all the ghosts out, can you? The Forerunner ghosts are haunting the human ghosts that are going to haunt you next, sir, and you should listen to them digging." She glared.

And the shipmaster raised his hand again. Now he tipped his head, confused, as if to look at the world from the same direction she did. Lassa' Ransau did not know his rank or his command structure. She knew that she had bought passage here, and that her father did not want her back because she babbled and sometimes went after small animals with knitting needles. Lassa'Ransau was touched, sick, special, Lassa'Ransau had been crazy all her life and then the demons took her sister.

She would use the names of the gods as leverage to find a direction in her life.

"I know you're scared of them," she said to the shipmaster, because this seemed to be working. Also, all of the sigils she had seen from space, glowing against Reach's surface, were supposed to be holy marks, but she knew they were exorcisms. "I can help you."

He gave in a little bit, like an irritated shopkeeper handing over a problem customer to a superior. "I must ask the World's Oracle for guidance in matters of such...spiritual importance."

The guards let her go.

The shipmaster rushed inside.

The ship that had brought Lassa here skimmed the landing pad and blasted off from the other side, leaving the guards standing in the wind. Blue mountains in the distance were slowly being obscured by clouds of smoke from far to the left. Lassa wrapped her four-fingered hands around the handle of her suitcase. The guards conspicuously failed to fidget. They looked unhappy, but they just couldn't kick her out. It wouldn't be right. Someone needed to be punished for Gor's death, and Lassa was beginning to feel the itch that meant anything nearby might be the next target for her attempts at calming down. Her parents had kept her from joining the fleet like Gor, saying that her anger needed to be gotten under control first. It didn't make sense to Lassa that she could be too eager to kill things to join the army.

Maybe if she'd gone and joined the fleet in the first place she could have defeated the demon before it got Gor...

But now times were desperate, bets were off, and her inexperience was not going to get in the way. She knew that Reach was the Covenant world most likely to have demons, since it was the farthest the Covenant had pushed into the human empire.

The wind kept up.

A few minutes later the shipmaster emerged from the base again with his head higher and eyes narrower than before. He nearly shouted. "While the World's Oracle is still recovering from his meditative throes, he wishes that anyone looking to hunt demons be permitted entrance. And since your ship has left I suppose it is common courtesy to show you to some kind of lodging." He approached her. "But remember this: you have no rank, you have no authority, and no matter how very gods-touched you are, you are not a guest here, but rather a recruit. You better show me that you're useful or else..." And he lowered his voice, because such words were blasphemy- "No matter what the World Oracle says, I will send you home to your daddy or whatever swamp spawned you. Do you understand?"

Lassa nodded. She didn't know what a World's Oracle was - Oracles usually advised High Counselors or even Prophets about spiritual matters, though, so this one must be important. The rest of the shipmaster's insults didn't bother her. She barely heard them. "Thanks." She waved to the guards as they flanked her, and went inside.

* * *

**Author's Note:** _I bet this chapter is the only piece of literature in the world to contain the phrases "meditative throes" and "he got his mandibles in order". Also, Lassa'Ransau is the anti-Relk. Designed as a Covenant character who's even more violent than the rest, she has probably had sociopathic tendencies for her whole life. Her family got tired of her and let her go off on her own: they could not deal with grieving for one daughter while being doctors to another. Although she is going to be a significant part of the plot of the second half of the story, judging by Relk a lot of her development is still to come._


	28. Bower

**XXVIII**

The closer Jorge and Six got to the city, the worse the plasma damage became. Green- and red-leaved trees were burned black on the downhill side, or splashed with silver plasma residue like some strange moss. The farther around the perimeter of the city they walked, the more the Spartans became convinced that something that didn't show up on their radar was following them.

Six stopped at the sound of a stick cracking. She and Jorge had been moving north, parallel to the mountain range. A stream, flowing separate from the one they had passed before, was sunk into a ravine up ahead. Six strained to differentiate its bubbling from the sounds of movement in the woods. "Did you hear that?"

"Hmm." Jorge had been making that noise a lot today. He was almost always quiet, but the burning of the city had seemed to take the voice out of him. It might also have been a precaution: without Noble's radio channel working they had to communicate through external speakers. Six could interpret pretty well, though.

"You think it's those people from the house?"

"Covenant would show up on the radar. Likely enough the people don't know what we are."

"Could be a shielded Elite." Six shifted one hand to the plasma rifle on her hip.

"On an occupied planet?"

"Good point." An Elite wouldn't need its shield here.

He looked around. Up ahead Six could see a large boulder, eight feet high and ten feet long, dappled with moss.

Jorge said, "What armor ability to you have?"

"I've still got Sprint from back in the shipyard."

"I've got Armor Lock, so those don't help us get invisible."

"You want to ambush them?"

"They seem to want to ambush us. This way, it might actually happen."

"And we know not to hurt them."

"Of course. It's a friendly ambush."

Six smiled. "Why don't you get behind that rock. I'll flush them out."

Jorge started walking. "Got a more specific plan?"

"I'm gonna do my best Elite impression."

They separated, keeping a careful watch on each other through their HUDs. Luckily, the friend/foe identification detector, built right into their helmets, was not reliant on an outside network like the radios. As she jogged off, Six thought that maybe the person with the green armor should've done the more visible position of this mission, but there wasn't anything she could do about it now.

She kept moving, every once in a while pausing to listen. The owners of the footsteps tried harder to be quiet as Six neared them, which meant every rustled leaf and every creak of leather clothing was even more audible than before. Twice she saw a figure weave between the trees, the height and shape of the body confirming that her quarry was human. As she closed in the figure's movements became erratic, and should could hear from its heavy breathing and see from the shape that it was a man, heavyset and out of shape.

"UNSC!" Six called out. "We're here to help."

The figure stilled. She thought she saw him go for a weapon, but it was actually a phone. From the way he shook the device, it wasn't working any better than the Spartans' had. Six approached, trying to make her steps gentle. "Hello?"

"Hello," said the man. He stopped moving, and Six tried to focus on his outline. One thing the survivors had apparently learned to do well was wear black clothing with odd silhouettes to try to avoid being seen in the shadowy forest. It looked like he had a bandolier but no firearm. All she could see of his face was a square of tan around his eyes. He said something that sounded like "Vagyit hoggy segitshen."

Six shook her head. "Stay there." She made a patting motion with her hands, and the man froze. Six walked quickly through the woods back to Jorge's position and called out to him as soon as she got in range. "It's one man. He's speaking Hungarian."

"Ah." Jorge's voice came from up above, and Six craned her neck to see that he was lying flat on the top of the boulder with his plasma rifle in hand. "I'll come down then."

Six smiled ruefully as Jorge clambered slowly down from the rock. In the meantime, the other human was sneaking up behind her. She could hear him rustling the bushes now, less worried about giving away his position. He spooked when he saw Jorge, but then seemed to steel his resolve, and came out into the open. Jorge approached and pulled off his mask. The two began to speak in their own language, and as they did so the man pulled down the cloth from over his mouth. He had a square chin with a salt-and-pepper beard, and glasses perched on a wide, flat nose. His voice was deep and smooth like Jorge's, and his words tended to blur together. Six thought that was probably just because she knew so little of the language. The word 'Spartan' was spoken a few times, modified but recognizable in the accent. Six bounced slightly on the balls of her feet as the two men continued to speak. A bird called in the forest canopy. Her HUD was empty of Covenant life signs.

After a few more sentences back and forth, Jorge turned to Six. "His name is Joska. They've been living in a cave system under our feet. Amazing."

"Cool," Six said, before she could think _great, more caves._

"He'll take us to them. They've not got many weapons between them, but the cave has defensible entrances and a water supply."

"Also cool. The Covenant don't know they're there?"

Jorge conferred with Joska, then translated. "He says that Covenant ships have seen the people guarding the entrances, but haven't attacked."

"Uh-oh. Doesn't their religion say to eradicate anyone in their way?"

"Yeah. either the local Covenant don't see these people as a threat, or they're sparing them for some reason."

"The people might still be attacked. We should help."

"That's my plan. They could share their shelter. He also says many of their survivors speak English."

"Good."

Jorge turned back to Joska. Six heard his name and her own mentioned, and then, Joska seemed to question their choice of alien weaponry.

After he replied, Jorge turned to Six. "He wanted to know why the UNSC didn't pull us out, so I've explained how we were stranded. He offered to take us back to his people."

"Good." Six removed her helmet. Joska's eyes immediately turned to her, and she waved. "Hello."

He said hello again flatly. There were a lot of things one could tell about a person without knowing their language. He was middle-aged and edging on overweight, with a shrewd expression. He had survived an alien invasion for almost a month with fifteen people likely to be strangers. He seemed serious and down-to-earth.

Six put her helmet back on to follow him through the woods. Jorge questioned him further. He used to work in the city frying moa burgers, and hadn't known any of the people he'd ended up fleeing with. Most of them knew each other though: two families had been camping in the woods on holiday before the Covenant attacked Visegrad, and their electric stoves and space heaters had come in handy. They hadn't left when the city was evacuated, for a reason that Joska seemed hesitant to explain. Joska could cook, he said with pride.

Six kept an eye on her radar and another on the path. Shrubs and some of the smaller trees had fallen in the morning's blast, leaving lots of leafy barriers at knee height. "Ask him about the people we saw at the house."

"He says, they were mother and daughter, part of one of the families who were camping. That was their house up on the hill." His voice saddened. "The mother died a few hours ago, during the explosions in the city."

Six could find nothing to say.

The cave entrance would have been almost impossible to see without someone pointing it out. It was at the bottom of a gully, with bushes all around. When it was pointed out to her, though, Six could see that some of them were actually branches lashed together with bark into convincingly organic shapes. Joska whistled, and a guard pulled the camouflage aside.

This man was younger, and had attempted to keep himself clean-shaven, with patchy success. "Hello, Joska," he said as other people started to ogle the Spartans and then close the entrance in quick succession. There were three refugees: a man, a woman, and a girl, who might have been the teen Six had shouted at earlier. Unlike the other survivors she had seen, they didn't all wear black. One wore a hunting hat that was a brighter orange then Six's armor. Then the light went down and Six was uncomfortably reminded of her days in darkness before she saw that someone had brought in electric light.

The newcomer seemed to notice her unsettled glances toward the entrance as people moved the barricade. "We may not have armor like you, but our defenses have worked so far." His tone was clear, his voice higher and younger than Jorge or Joska's. It expressed offense subtly and politely as though he very consciously refused to offend. Six got the immediate impression that he was used to people being slightly afraid of him.

"No, no," she said. "It's just that we've been trapped in caves before." She leaned forward to shake his hand. "Are you in charge here? I'm Aislinn."

His handshake was businesslike and firm. She made an effort to keep hers gentle. He said, "Kristof. We don't have a leader."

No one else in the passage contested that claim. The barricade in front of the hidden entrance had now been skillfully rearranged into a sort of trellis or domed bower that let light in while creating a small space outside the cave that wouldn't look like a man-made structure from the air. Jorge introduced himself to Kristof, and Joska told Kristof his story in Hungarian while Six looked around.

In the dim daylight dappled by the woven tree branches she could see the smooth transition from grass to moss to the dark gray cave floor. The survivors had piled boxes on the floor in a u-shape that could serve as a second barricade if the entrance was breached. A flashlight leaned against a camp chair, which if it had fallen over would have hit a lip of cracked rock on the cave floor. No one was sitting in the chair, although it looked like a sentry post. A few people clustered between it and the cave entrance, curious about the Spartans. Six met their eyes, lingering on the black-haired teenager she now felt sure she'd seen at the abandoned house.

Then Kristof drew her attention back by addressing both Spartans. "You're welcome to stay the night with us." He didn't sound particularly happy about it. His affect wasn't so flat as to slide his tone all the way down into rueful, but Joska seemed to have all the energy between them. He smiled with the satisfaction of having found something that would contribute to the group.

"Thank you." Aislinn made sure to thank Kristof personally. He was suspicious of something, but that only made sense when he was a refugee in a war zone.

The girl kept looking at Six, and the two of them drew away from the men into the lighted bower as Kristof withdrew in the opposite direction, back into his fellows.

"What are you doing here?" The girl asked. She looked furtively up from under her dark, severely straight fringe of hair. Everything about her was thin: her limbs, her face, her hair. It was hard to determine her age, or at least whether she was in her older or younger teens. Determining one's social relationship to a non-augmented teenager had never been an essential skill for growing Spartans.

"Trying to avoid the Covenant." Six started to take her mask off, but the girl rapid-fire questioned her again.

"Did you know the Covenant killed my mother?" The frankness of the question made her sound young.

"Yes." Six replied with her usual immediacy. "They killed mine too."

This gave the girl pause, but then she rallied the pride she had gained from her loss. "They killed mine _today." _Chin raised high, she scampered off. Six watched her with a worried gaze, but the girl was caught by Kristof and Joska before Six could follow. Joska spoke to her quietly, politely, in English words too soft to hear. This freed Jorge and Kristof to stand next to Six as the rest of the people drifted off with the girl, leaving one young male sentry to sit in the camp chair and set the flashlight against his leg.

Kristof paused to look at Six as if to wonder why she was flitting about so much. He asked, "You've got experience fighting the Covenant?"

Jorge nodded. Six shrugged as if to say _look at what they've done to my armor. _She said, "We've been here since July. Not dead yet."

Kevin looked up and down at their armor. "If we let you stay here - and we can't, well, there's no reason for me to stop you - you could help us with our defenses."

"Of course," Jorge said.

"You're free to look around the cave. Just come back when you're ready. We've got a natural lake we use for water if you want to clean up."

Six nearly slumped with a sigh of relief. "That would be wonderful."

Kevin smiled tightly. "I'm sure. Talk to me or Marta - you may have seen her already - when you need. I see you met Laura as well."

Six said, "She's the girl who lost her mother."

"Yes."

"We saw her before. She was at our - I mean, the house where we were attacked last."

He looked solemn. "She and her mother went to her family's place this morning. They'd gone out for supplies." Joska approached and muttered something, and Kristof translated. "Yes. They just intended to go camping in their backyard when all of this started." He gestured at the woods and the cave.

Jorge said, "Your first defense should be to take this entrance thing down." He sounded surprised at the survivors' naiveté, and indicated the bower. "I'm amazed they haven't seen it."

"They have. They're all out there but don't seem to care about us," Kristof said. "I don't know why not."

"Hmm."

"We don't know."

"Thank you for your offer." Jorge nodded and the other two disbanded. Jorge moved to investigate the bower. The branches nearly brushed against the top of his head, and he looked closely between the leaves. He took his helmet off to examine them more closely. Six felt that the two survivors would be curious about what he looked like, but then, they were curious about everything. They would talk about the Spartans and determine how useful they were. A noise sounded in the distance, like a wolf howl: maybe some sort of Covenant machinery.

Jorge said, "There's something off about the timing."

"What do you mean?"

"These people should have been evacuated when the Winter Contingency began. They must have been out here since then."

"That's almost a month."

"They want _defense_, not to leave. And the Covenant haven't seemed to notice them. That's odd."

She mentally flipped through options: these people could be working with the Covenant, or they could be hiding something illegal from the UNSC. But the former just didn't happen, usually, and the latter shouldn't be enough to keep them from wanting to leave a planet that was being gradually, completely glassed. "Are we safe here?"

"It seems so."

"Let's keep an eye out."

"Okay. I'm going to get to know the natives. And then I'm dying for a shower." It didn't seem like these survivors would have enough weaponry to be a threat to the Spartans. Besides, Six's natural tendency was to be nice to people.

"You'll get a lake."

"Good enough." Six smiled.

* * *

Lassa saw very quickly that the makeshift Sangheili base was divided into spiritual and secular sections. Energy shields covered all of the doors on the right-hand side and prevented anyone from entering. They wouldn't be at all resistant to knitting needles. The patches of skin between the Shipmaster's armor would be, though, and that thought comforted Lassa as she followed him and he patronized her.

"You're here by the grace of the World's Oracle. What do you want to do for us?"

"Fight."

"We'll have you out with the first Grunt patrol tomorrow morning. That's at four."

"I want to fight demons."

"We haven't got any." He paused at a door. "Here's the girls' cell. No one's here at the moment. They're training, like people who know how to be in the army do." The door irised open and he gestured inside.

She pointed one of her longest bone needles at his neck. It would have looked silly if she'd tried to reach up far enough to get his eye. "If I'm chosen special, then you shouldn't talk to me like that."

He sighed. "Pick a bed that doesn't have anything next to it."

She stepped closer, circling the needle. "Listen to me. I have _work to do_, and the Forerunners willing you won't get in the way of doing it."

The Shipmaster pushed her toward the room. "As far as I'm concerned, you're the team mascot. Stay here until someone comes for you."

He shut the door on her curses.

Angrily, Lassa sat down on a bed, not caring whose it was. The Shipmaster was probably talking to someone about her right now. She could see people passing by, their shadows distorted by the bumpy blue surface of the door. Everyone would be talking about her, even this World's Oracle. Everyone would be saying she was crazy.

But she wasn't. She was going to avenge her sister.

She looked around at the rows of round, carefully made beds, and the trunks sitting next to each one. This wasn't the place for her. It wasn't the place for the Shipmaster either: he was just here because his ship had crashed, and now he was the secretary for a base that didn't need him. He was just taking his anger out on Lassa. She would show him.

She tapped her needle against her knee, bored, and wondered how exactly doing that could also lead her to the demons.

There was a little bit of trepidation when she thought of them, of course. She had heard that they were stronger than Elite warriors and had magical, blasphemous weapons. She had heard that they ate their young alive. She had heard that if one bit you, you turned into a demon too. Maybe they would kill her.

She shivered, but forced herself to dismiss that idea. She had to succeed, for Gor. And because, now that she'd jumped ship from planet to planet until she got here, she had nowhere else to go.

Lassa lay down in one of the nestlike beds, and set her needle carefully beside her on its rim. She kept her eyes open for as long as she could, watching the door.

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry about the delay! I'll try to get more than one chapter out per month next time. I got distracted by Red vs Blue and tumblr. I could say that this chapter was difficult to write, too, but they always challenge me to do something I haven't done before, usually with dialogue. This chapter draws inspiration from BioWare RPGs and Charles Dickens among other things, which is even weird for me to say.


	29. Noble Alone

Hey, everyone. Sorry for the delay (again). I've reached a weird place with this story. This is the longest thing I've ever written - not just the longest fanfic, the _longest piece of fiction I have ever written. _I'm very proud of it. But I'm getting to that point where Reach isn't my main fandom any more, and although I love this story and its characters the writing is beginning to feel like work. That doesn't mean that I won't do the work. It means that updates might come less often, because other fanfic is more relaxing. It doesn't help that there isn't much of a Reach fandom any more, or at least not an active, productive one on sites I frequent. So _Wolves _isn't dead. I really appreciate the support of all you readers and don't want to let you down. I finally know how the story ends now. But updates might not come as often as usual.

I tackled Spartan relationships head-on in this chapter. The fact is, I still don't quite know how they work. The way I see it, Spartans understand that emotional attachments lead to physical relationships and they understand that physicality has an emotional component, but they don't understand that those two things happen at the same time. This is probably the most sensual chapter in the story. For those who appreciate that I've gone relatively light on the romance, though, I will say that it will be the only scene like this until, probably, the end.

Thanks to **wordswithout **for, well, writing part of this chapter. We made a trade.

* * *

_XXIX_

The sunlight through the camouflaged bower was strong and yellow. Six thought she would never have been able to guess from a holo that the cities all around had been glassed. The sky was a fragile blue, and the clouds in tatters.

Six said, "I never thought I'd be so happy to see another cave." She stretched her arms up and sighed, then unsealed her helmet and lifted it off. Jorge nodded and held out his hands. She gave him the helmet almost automatically.

He said, "This one is more comfortable than the other." He lowered his voice. "But it was nice to know what our company was doing there."

"You don't think we should trust these guys."

"I don't know why they weren't evacuated. They should have gone to a UNSC rally point. Of course, if they tried from here they probably wouldn't have made it."

Six turned to face him. Lifting up on her toes, she touched both hands to the underside of his helmet and found the release latch on the left side. It was difficult to work from the opposite direction than usual, but she got it and carefully took his helmet off, smiling sheepishly as he leaned down to make it easier. She retreated a few steps and smiled at him mischievously, holding the helmet tight in her arms. "We're okay, right?"

"Right."

She thought then that their relationship had changed from something that needed to be _worked on _ and _dealt with _to a reassuring, solid presence like Jorge himself, combined with Six's sense of fun and diligence.

The young sentry said something, and Six turned to look at him. She was surprised to see the motherless girl standing there too. The girl's steps had been almost silent, and Six noticed that her dark eyebrows drew together. She was angry at being caught. She didn't move when Six walked toward her, although she stepped to the side in a perhaps unconscious attempt to hide behind a box. The girl peeked out and looked at her silently, drumming her fingers against a box. The sentry remained sitting in his sagging camp chair.

Six approached Laura slowly. "Hey. I'm sorry if I upset you."

Laura's loss brimmed in her eyes, but she refused to talk about it. Opening up about other things was easier. She perked up, throwing one strand of black hair behind her ear. "Do you want me to show you around?"

Six was taken aback by her enthusiasm but didn't show that either. Maybe she could reassure the girl indirectly. "Sure."

"Come on."

Laura led Six toward the back of the cave. They met Kristoff coming out of a side passage, and he looked down at Laura from under thick eyebrows. "Where are you going?" Jorge approached from behind, and Kristoff looked between the Spartans evenly.

Laura said, "I wanted to show her around."

Kristoff nodded solemnly, then looked at Six. "There isn't a lot to see. The rear entrance is defensible but without weapons that doesn't mean much to us."

"I understand." Six nodded.

Kristoff passed a hand over his face. "We're tired. Go ahead." He blinked. "How long do you intend to stay here?"

Jorge sounded quizzical. "Not sure. Until we find someplace better. Isn't that your plan?"

"Of course." Kristoff looked down. "There just doesn't seem to be anywhere better right now. Jozka keeps us fed. And you..." He looked at the sword at Six's hip and Jorge's heavy turret gun. "Thank you for helping us."

"That's all right," Jorge said calmly. "We'd like to search the city for a comm tower we can refit."

"The Covenant bombed it thoroughly." Kristoff shook his head. "I doubt there are any left."

"We'll find out."

"Only the two of you?"

Six said, "We've gotten this far."

Kristoff asked how many Spartans they had been traveling with, and Jorge began to talk about their long route here. Laura glanced at Six and moved into the far hallway. Six followed. Her main impressions of Kristoff were that he had gained the gray in his hair recently: he was nervous about his people surviving, and it meant a lot that a civilian could even bear that weight. He lead like a professional, even if his sentry posts were made with plastic suitcases.

Laura lead her to a branch of the cave. it widened out into an area where the survivors had pitched tents and strewn blankets. Laura gestured beyond it and lead Six into a narrower corridor. The Spartan's shoulder armor hit the sides of the wall for a few steps, but then the two women emerged into another lighted section of the cave. There was no easy exit here: the route to the sky was eight feet up and covered in naturally tangled vines and leaves. Another camp chair was folded against the wall.

"This is the second guard post." Laura grasped the chair and rocked it back and forth.

"Why isn't there anyone here?" The tactical weakness looked dangerous to Six.

"I thought there was. I dunno." She shrugged.

"We should get someone to stand guard here." Six headed for the hall, training and not a little bit of fear kicking in.

"Wait!" Laura held out a hand. She stood away from the chair, like a boat unmooring, and drifted to the middle of the alcove. "I wanted to talk to you."

Six wasn't sure whether her concerned look conveyed actual concern, even without her helmet on, but she tried anyway. "Something you wanted to say without the others around?"

"I guess. I just thought...if you came from another part of the planet, maybe other parts were safer."

Six's heart sank, but she had to tell the truth, and quickly. "They're not. I'm sorry. We're going to try to get in touch with someone who can help as soon as we can, but I don't know when that will be."

Laura said, "Kristoff says we'll leave when everything's ready. But I don't know how we'll be any more ready than we are now." She looked down, and then abruptly changed the subject. "She gave me this." Six was beginning to see that Laura either didn't cope well with talking about her mother directly, or liked to spring the news of her death on people. Maybe both. The _'she' _must have referred to Laura's mother, but the girl held out a silver necklace strung with a small, pointed tooth like a shark's, and a gray-and-white feather that Six would have sworn came from a Skirmisher. If the tooth was from an Elite, and it looked a lot like Relk's, Six had no idea how Laura's mother would have acquired either item.

Laura held the necklace out but didn't let it go, and Six let the feather and the tooth fall through her fingers. "These look like they're from...Covenant."

"My mom killed them." Laura lifted her chin.

Six looked at her in surprise. "I thought you didn't have weapons."

"Kristoff gave mom a shotgun the first time she went to get food from our house. Her and Kristoff have been friends since my dad moved to the city. I thought they were going to get together, but it never really happened."

"What happened to your dad when the invasion started?"

"I don't know. I thought when we got to Earth or where ever... you know, after this... I could find out." At the mention of her father the girl finally began to look snuffly and lost. Six put a hand on her shoulder but wasn't sure what to do next. Luckily Laura decided for her, rallying and slipping out from under her touch to sail down the hallway again. Six followed her to the room with the tents, the biggest one she'd seen in this cave so far. Jozka was there now, sitting in a chair with a contentedly blank expression. He lifted a short-fingered hand to wave at Laura, and she returned the same language-transcending gesture. Laura sounded proud again. "We live here. Girls on one side, guys on the other."

"That's how it was for Spartans too," Six said without even thinking about it, but the place reminded her of the large dorms modeled after samurai and Greek Spartan life-training schools.

Laura did not seem interested. She looked up at Six and wiped her tears off her cheek. Six knew it was a big deal for the girl to be crying in front of her, and she didn't know why Laura had taken to her so quickly, but it was good to be able to talk. When she spoke again Six could see how adult she was in her thin cheekbones and the way she flicked her hair back. "Do you need anything?"

Six smiled. Laura was taking charge. She would make a good soldier. "Honestly, the only thing I really need is a shower. A hot meal would be good but hot _water.._.that would be best."

Laura smiled back. "We don't have any hot water, but we do have the lake. It's on the other side of the cave. Here, I'll get you a towel." She moved over to a dusty sleeping bag and rummaged through a backpack that sat in the middle of it. Six noticed her shoulders fell when she turned her face to the bag, as if she couldn't keep up a facade. She kept talking, though. "We had enough soap for a while but that ran out fast, sorry...I should have gotten more from...the house. Here you go." The towel was white and made of a porous material that wasn't even as fuzzy as what you got in the army.

Six draped it over her arm. "Thanks."

Laura gave her more directions to the lake, and Six dashed as soon as they were finished. She saw Kristoff and Jorge talking in the main room and passed them by. Jorge would reach her on her radio if he needed to talk.

The second branch of the cave was about as long as the first, with another oddly-shaped room with a sloping entrance to one side. Six saw more survivors there, talking in a tight group, but she moved on and they looked up quickly, their eyes moon-bright in the darkness, before ignoring her.

At the end of the path she found the lake, a small but deep natural pool about ten feet across and lit by the same mismatched, bare bulbs that the survivors used everywhere. A gap in the cave far above let in dappled light through the foliage. Most tenacious plants had grown up in the corner that must have gotten the most access to the sun, creating a small hill at the edge of the lake with a patch of ferns and grass on the top. The water was tinged slightly green, and was deep enough in places that it turned black and obscured the pool's depth. Six guessed that it had underwater egresses on either side. When she dipped her hands in and splashed the water on her face it was shockingly cold but refreshing and clear; a drop that ended up between her lips tasted coppery and sweet.

MJOLNIR armor took a lot of time, balance, and strategy to remove without the help of a robotic arm, but it was possible, and Spartans got training for survival missions like this. The thick orange plates on her arms came off last; the assisted power helped make removing everything else easier. The rest was simple, and she left her bodysuit and undergarments on the shore while she waded into the lake with one hand capping the metal circle of her femoral IV dock and the other gingerly testing the rippled surface of the water.

The lakefloor dropped off fast so she stayed in the lighted shallows, and with great gusto gave her hair the soaking she had wanted for weeks. She got used to the cold and splashed around, feeling the smile on her face and the water streaming around her. Feeling clean was a joy.

Spartan-IIIs did not associate their bodies with shame. They were usually old enough at the onset of training to have learned some social taboos, but in training gender distinction mattered very little. Modesty among their own kind became as irrelevant to a Spartan as it would be to an animal. This meant that Six sat on the shore, combing her fingers through her hair and thinking about how best to defend the human survivors from the Covenant, while Jorge walked in behind her, said a brief hello, and took his bath. When he finished, he shaved his week-old beard with a razor acquired from Kristoff and sat at the edge of the water wearing the bottom half of his black suit. Six shrugged her own under-suit over her shoulders, covering pale skin that finally, after almost four weeks, felt comfortable and healthy.

With a great sense of gratitude to Laura, she sat down next to Jorge near the water and watched the fading sunlight filter through the vine-covered crack in the ceiling.

He followed her gaze. "It's not a bad view," he said. "Would have been preserved already if Reach weren't such a young colony. These people were lucky to find it. It shouldn't have happened in the middle of the war."

She nodded, then stretched sore arms and waited. The conversation faded but the silence that replaced it wasn't awkward: any soldier in the universe was used to silence. Any Spartan, doubly so. They sat and it was quiet. Six wasn't sure how or why, but she knew that the moment would hold as long as it was needed and then it would be changed.

She waited.

"I think," said Jorge, "I think we were lucky, too." And then he kissed her.

Their last kiss had been gentle and hesitant, but this threw those things away and became all strength and teeth. Six leaned into it, craving the touch of skin that wasn't hers. Spartans became their armor after a while, so that Jun seemed to have green flesh and Kat was blue when Six thought about her. Their armor was alive, or almost so, and so it was exhilarating to grab at Jorge with human hands and feel his body as it was, half man and half weapon, metallic heartbeat somewhere far below.

Jorge's hands were on her hips, in her hair, running across her face. She bit his lip because it was a human part and went swollen with blood for the second after she let go. They scuffled more than embraced, or else no one had ever bothered to show Six the difference, and in their haste her back hitched up against the small outcrop of foliage and something heavy dropped into the water. Both of them startled: she felt Jorge go stiff in her arms.

Six was a soldier and she knew her duty, but for that first moment, lost in her fascination with another human's skin, she cursed the war that was ever a distraction. Then Jorge was pulling away from her, saying, "Come look at this," in her ear, and she had no choice but to look where he was pointing.

The stock of a rifle was poking out from under a fern, and Six peered down into the water where the ripples were dying to see another DMR at the bottom of the lake. Jorge moved dirt around until a pile caved in and they saw, formerly hidden under the plants, a cache of weapons.

* * *

The Sangheili soldiers returned to the barracks after Lassa fell asleep. She woke to them growling and jostling among themselves. Lassa blinked rapidly and moved off the bed as soon as a female in blue armor stalked toward it. Even if Lassa was on a holy mission of revenge, she was still going to show deference to actual trained soldiers.

She approached two Sangheili who were talking by the door. They ignored her until she spoke up. "Excuse me."

The two looked down at her.

"I'm trying to find humans. Can you help me?"

The soldiers exchanged glances, mandibles fluttering and breaking up the smooth, brown surface of their cheeks. They probably thought she was a spy or a mystic. A mere child wouldn't have been able to get in here.

"They're almost all gone," one soldier said brusquely.

The other was slightly taller and prouder. "There's another nest that we will gloriously destroy tomorrow."

The reverent tone made Lassa think this female would accept the idea of a covert cleric testing the soldiers' faith. To test her, Lassa said, "Have you followed all of the proscribed Forerunner laws to reach this conclusion?" Her voice was higher-pitched than she liked. Lassa curled her fingers and vowed to train herself to sound more adult and less subservient.

"Of course," the deferent soldier said.

The proud one had to get a word in. "There's not a lot of protocol required in tracking a ship. It's been trying to evade us, but she's right: it's got to come down sometime and we'd rather find where it's going and kill them all then just shoot down the ship and chance losing it. As the Forerunners dictate, we should clear the universe of heretics." Lassa couldn't quite be sure if the soldier was being sarcastic as she said this, but their gazes locked.

"Good," Lassa said, trying to keep up a condescending tone. "The World's Oracle will be pleased." She turned to go, but the devout soldier held out a hand.

"He sent you here?"

Lassa turned and took a risk. "Yes."

"Is he happy with us?" She looked worried. The other soldier narrowed her eyes.

Lassa got an idea. "Yes. But he demands more charity from his people. I was told you would provide me with a bed."

"Of course..." said the devout one. "But we don't have an extra..."

"Yes we do," said the taller soldier. "Are you against sleeping in a dead woman's bed, ma'am?"

"No," Lassa replied quickly without really thinking about it. She wouldn't object to much. She needed to get her revenge.

That night she lay there in clean-smelling sheets made to regulation standard. Every slight sound of the Sangheili shifting around in the darkness reminded her that these people could bring her closer to the demons she needed to kill. When that was over, she could go home again. She could take up knitting.


	30. Her Share of Luck

** XXX**

Six bit her lip and kept staring at the cache of weapons she had found, noting boxes of ammunition beneath the stocky black bodies of UNSC rifles and pistols. She dug one heel into the dirt. "What..."

"No." Sitting beside her, Jorge denied it all. "No."

"They lied to us." She glanced at him. "Laura lied to us...or didn't know better. Kristoff didn't tell her."

"He said they weren't armed. This doesn't mean they're Insurrectionists."

"I didn't say they were..." But Six hadn't even thought of that possibility. She was too focused on fighting the Covenant to remember that there was a human force trying to take down the military for entirely different reasons. "Do you think they are?"

Jorge stood up. He turned his back to her as he geared up, retrieving weapons and armor. She magnetized her sword to her hip after she pulled her own heavy armor on. Reflections from the water floated gray-blue on the walls of the cave.

Six lowered her voice, suddenly worried that someone would hear. "Even if they are, why wouldn't they have left when the invasion started?"

"I don't know."

"They have civilians with them."

Jorge approached her, also speaking quietly. "You mean the girl."

"Yeah. I'm sure Laura doesn't know what Kristoff is up to. He's their leader, most likely, and he didn't tell her anything."

"He might not be."

"Then who? Joska?"

"I don't know."

Six pulled her helmet on. "Kristoff commands the most respect." She thought about how easy it would be to threaten him into explaining his position now: he had no weapons on him.

Jorge made a patting motion, still holding his helmet under the other arm. "We should talk to him first. Not telling Laura his plans is not a crime."

"Is being part of the Insurrection?"

Jorge looked down. "Not officially."

For the second time that day Six regretted that their helmet radios weren't functioning: it would be nice to plan what they were going to say while they were walking. She was willing, though, to talk to the leader of the survivors and see what Kristoff said. She looked around to stretch her neck and get used to the feeling of being sealed in. The shield and IFF displays were comfortingly free of red.

"Let's try not to kill anyone we know," she muttered.

"That's how the Insurrection gets you, Six. They use traitors ad spies. They count on us being kind."

Both Spartans kept their masks on as they walked into the small tunnel leading toward the entrance to the cave. Kristoff was still in the offshoot cavern with a woman and another man, all of them looking relaxed and leaning back in the camp chairs. Jorge surveyed them, and three pairs of eyes blinked back.

"Hey," Six said. Kristoff uncrossed his long legs to place both feet flat on the floor.

When Jorge spoke, Six realized her cheery greeting had already made her one half of a good cop/bad cop scenario. Jorge said, "We found a weapons cache by the lake."

Two pairs of eyes shifted nervously, the survivors glancing at one another, but Kristoff remained composed. "Of course you did."

"What did you say you were here for?" Jorge accused quietly. "Camping?"

The others looked wary, but Kristoff spread his hands. "How else would you trust us? We didn't want to lose you."

Six said, "We didn't want to lose you either. You had shelter. So who are you, really?"

Kristoff glanced at his companions "My friends don't want me to tell you."

"Tell us what?" Jorge stepped forward. One long stride brought him well into the center of the cavern.

Six felt a headache coming on from the stress and from not eating enough: the pain wormed its way between her eardrum and her temple like an animal with a mind and weight of its own.

Kristoff took a breath. "The weapons are owned by the Insurrection. Not all of us are part of the group." Both of his companions looked reassured, the woman uncrossing her arms and the man picking nervously at the fabric of his chair.

"But you are," Jorge pressed.

"Yes. We took you in because we thought it would be safe to have you on our side. The aliens boxed us in the same as you."

Jorge said, "So you're against the UNSC, but willing to work with Spartans when it helps you."

"You didn't decide to fight us." Kristoff looked down, finally showing something besides assurance. His thick black hair was balding at the top.

Jorge huffed. "I've heard all the arguments for the Insurrection. They aren't important now. How much of the story about camping is true?"

"All of it." Kristoff regained his imperious gaze forward. "My family have never worked with the Insurrection. I joined while I was in my first marriage, and never told Laura's mother." He sighed. "Joska's restaurant was used as a drop-off point for local gangs, and we'd bring in our stuff through there too. But he was just a middle man who'd become a friend. I called for help from the Rebellion, but some people here have no affiliation with them. We just picked them up along the way, trying to get away from the glassing."

Jorge said, "Why didn't you leave when the Winter Contingency started?"

"That was my mistake." Again, Kristoff looked downcast. Six wondered what he had done in the past, why he hated the UNSC with a determination that impotently defied the alien threat that the army alone had so far managed to hold off. She used to fight Insurrectionists, but she'd been a hunting dog set after a bird then, and hadn't stopped to talk to her prey before she had it in her mouth. She had always assumed that the alien invasion would bring the Insurrection back into the fold. Humanity would be safer in numbers.

"Your timing could have been better," Kristoff said with a sigh. "We had a pilot in orbit. Our ship should be here in a few hours if it survives. Last we heard it was being chased all around the planet by the Covenant."

"I can pilot," Six said. 'If your people can get here we might have a better chance with me at the wheel."

Kristoff glared at her. His imperious attitude was back in full, his brow furrowing. "We have a pilot."

Six heard a coughing sound. It could have been an animal in the forest or a machine starting up. She looked at the ceiling as the sound repeated, searching for the source as it seemed to vibrate through the floor. Jorge put a hand on her shoulder, a reassurance that turned into a shove against her armor as the ground shook. Kristoff immediately seemed to deflate, his expression wrinkling up."That's not us!"

"I wouldn't expect you to fire on your own people!" Six said. Jorge moved toward the entrance to the room. He still had the plasma rifle magnetized to his hip. Six turned to Kristoff, who had regained some of his composure. He ran a hand through his hair and looked at her, almost accusing.

"Get everybody to the entrance," she said.

"We have contingency plans," he insisted. He pulled a radio from his pocket, looked at it, then shoved it back in his pocket as he realized, probably for the hundredth time, that there was no signal to receive. This small fault made him more vulnerable to Six's eyes. She didn't have much time for further musing on his character or the Insurrection. Laura ran into the room, trailed by an older, rotund woman Six thought might be Marta.

Laura slowed down so fast that her hair whipped at her face. She addressed Kristoff. "Greg saw Covenant overhead. They're shooting at us!"

Kristoff's expression hardened. "I know. Is the back door clear?"

"I'm not sure yet. Joska went back to look." She was breathing heavily, in heaves that rocked her shoulders. She hadn't frozen, though, and that was good. Six saw in her now a body imposing on itself the desire to live.

Kristoff said, "I've got weapons cached in the back. Come with me and we'll arm as many people as we can."

Laura stopped mid-breath. "I thought we didn't have any weapons left?"

Kristoff paused, and in that space Jorge moved closer to Laura. "Do what he says. It'll be all right."

Six grabbed her sword hilt and swung without lighting the blade. "We'll try to drive them off."

Kristoff did not disagree. Six spun on her heel and passed Laura on her way out of the cave. The girl was still looking suspiciously at Kristoff, and Six gave her a thumbs-up before turning the corner.

Jorge followed Six, boots thumping on the stone ground as the Spartans headed for the entrance. They reached it in a matter of seconds. The teenage sentry had ducked behind the barricade and armed himself with a heavy kitchen knife. The bower was intact, the sun still dappling the floor with patches of yellow light. Shadows shook as another charge dropped outside.

Jorge stopped at the barricade and addressed the scout. "Can you hold this position?"

The scout was nervous, the whites of his eyes showing wide around the dark irises. He nodded.

Six said, "Kristoff has guns in the back. Someone will give one to you. We're going to try to keep anything from coming out of that entrance."

The boy looked closer to panic now than Laura had been. He cracked right in front of them, the knife shaking in his hand as another explosion sent dirt falling into the cave. He was wearing cargo pants and a University of Reach sweatshirt. "I'm not a soldier."

"I know," Six said. "Now you have to be."

"If the cave shakes much more, get out of here and back to the group." Jorge nodded. Either inspiration or intimidation had worked, because the boy sat down, shoulders hunched, and faced the entrance.

Six pushed through the barrier. She activated the sword, almost invisible in the bright light. Red lights on her HUD lit up immediately and indicated Covenant right around the corner and on the hill above her. An engine roared overhead and for a moment she saw a dropship above the trees, something with the piscine nacelles of a Pelican. She thrilled to the idea that it might be a UNSC craft, but no dots appeared on her radar.

Jorge looked at it too. An Elite hopped down from the hill behind him, and Six turned and brought her sword up as the alien roared. Jorge shot it twice, green plasma like little stars splashing against the Elite's armor. A headshot dropped it, and then four Grunts danced around the other side of the hill. The cave jutted out from the land a little bit, forming a rocky plateau that Six realized backed against a cliff wall but also extended at least fifty yards from it, forming the roof of the cave. Red lights indicated more aliens up there, and if Six's sense of direction was correct, they were closer to the back entrance to the humans' hideaway than she was.

She signaled for Jorge to take care of the Grunts, and jumped onto a ridge of rock at the side of the cave's entrance. Vines slid under the grippy plates on her hands as she fought to keep her forward motion. Two more pushes with her cleft boots brought her to the top of the rise, and into the sights of one Elite with a plasma rifle and one with a sword.

The Pelican tore through the sky again, catching branches and dislodging leaves as it lost altitude and plowed into the trees. A Covenant vessel dogged it but would not descend so dangerously low.

The Elites returned their attention to Six fast. The nearer one fired, the latter pivoting on thick, clumsy-looking legs and raising its sword. Six took two shots on her shields and dashed forward. One slash of her sword bounced off the Elite's forearm. The sword felt ungainly in her hands, its shape and weight nothing like the pugilsticks she had used in training, but Six pressed on with what she had learned on Reach and the Elite went down with a slash burned from its neck to the opposite shoulder.

Six reached down for its plasma rifle, and when she straightened up the second Elite was right in front of her. She stuck the gun to her hip and ducked under the Elite's sword strike, slamming it with her elbow as she went by. A blade's distance away she spun to face the alien. From down below she could hear Grunt yowls, gunfire, and the growls of Skirmisher reinforcements. The Pelican's jets whined from somewhere behind her.

Just as she was flicking her gaze to her HUD to check on a crowd of red dots coming up behind her, the Elite swung. The sword scored a line of pressure up the left side of her chest, and her shields flared but held. She caught the next strike and the swords actually sparked together. She'd never fenced with an Elite before, and it knew the tricks better than she did.

It caught one of the tines of her sword between its own and wrenched her to the side, driving her off balance. She pulled the gun from her hip and fired twice to give herself some distance. She felt the cushioning gel layer of her armor pushing against her sword arm, probably preventing a strain. She jabbed twice with the sword, hitting once, but the Elite was keeping its distance and chuffing like it thought it had the upper hand. Three Grunts jogged up the hill behind her. Six backpedaled and shot the Elite again, to no avail. It charged, the Grunts right behind it now, and Six bared her teeth inside her mask as they attacked.

She dodged one strike and splashed at the Elite's leg. It howled and presented its back, and she cut across its spine. Its shields flared white and died.

Plasma from the Grunts' pistols flared on the edge of her vision. She turned back to the Elite to finish it off as the Grunts crowded around it.

She blocked one sword strike and got the Elite across the neck. It fell, tripping over a grassy knoll and disappearing into the ground. Six barely had time to wonder about this when one Grunt charged and another threw a neon blue grenade at her feet.

The nearer Grunt dived out of the way in the same direction Six did. She shot it with both hands on the plasma rifle, the sword adhered back at her side. The Grunt flew, screaming, and plunged over the edge the Elite had fallen down. A moment later Six's back foot came down on a thick tuft of grass without any ground to support it. With a terrible lurch, she fell backward into darkness and rushing air. She saw immediately that this was the roof of the cave where she had bathed, vines hanging from the dark brown wall in lighted patches, and -

Water. She hit it with a jolt like waking up from a nightmare. The water couldn't get through her suit, although she sank like a stone, and her flashlight clicked on immediately. It illuminated the body of the Grunt floating a yard away. Six took one long breath and kicked. Sealing her gun to her side she cupped her hands and swam toward the surface. Her progress was slow, her armor too heavy. The darkness and a fear of drowning began to pinch at the back of her mind, but as she took another breath of recycled air it subsided. She let herself fall, feeling the water mush against her arms as bubbles fled like schools of fish toward her surface. The lake had seemed shallow. It should be possible to walk to the shore.

Something grabbed her ankle, fingers struggling to find the gaps in her armor. The Elite was still down there and barely alive, silver armor making it look like a monstrous cave fish.

Six pulled her gun. Plasma worked passably under water. She shot the Elite, rode the kick back to the Grunt, grabbed its flailing, scaly arm, and shot its methane tank.

It exploded in proper Grunt fashion. Water rushed past Six as she rode the burst to the surface. The surface broke and kicked the Grunt in another direction. Six landed on her shoulder on the beach, rolled, hitched up against a small shelf of rock, lay there and laughed.

When she had taken two deep breaths she stood up, dripping black puddles onto the dirt. The cache, nearby, was empty of weapons and filled with newly-dug dirt. A moment of remorse for the drowned Elite and sacrificial Grunt - Relk really must have gotten to her - turned into a jog across the cavern. She would take to the back entrance and see if the survivors had been evacuated. That must have been an Insurrectionist Pelican outside. She eyed her HUD for Jorge's life sign and found the reassuring green light bobbing about on the edges of the field.

Supplies had been left inside the cave in the rush - camp chairs and blankets, a dead radio. The teenage door guard had been left too. He ran up to Six as she started to march into the second arm of the cave, his face pale and a UNSC pistol in his hand.  
He deepened his voice, trying to sound older than he was. "They didn't try to get in."

"Good. We're going for the back door. Were you expecting a Pelican?"

"Kristoff said someone might pick us up."

"They will if they survive."

"Where's the other Spartan?"

"He's outside." She would have said 'he'll be okay' if she didn't think that would be too close to lying. They both had cheated death too many times all ready. There had been a time when Six thought the AI choosing her must have used up her share of luck. "We'll try to meet up with everybody."

"Did you see my mom?" he said. His voice was getting more tightly controlled, syllables at the end of the words disappearing into the deep instead of threatening to crack.

"Marta?" Six guessed.

"Yeah."

"Not yet. If you see her or Laura before I do, tell them I'm okay." That was close to a lie too, and he caught it.

"Will you be?"

'More likely than you' was the immediate response she thought of, but she wasn't going to say it. "I'm a Spartan," she said, and the propaganda said with reverence by civilians, sarcastically by Spartans, and belligerently by ODSTs chased down her words. _Spartans never die._

At the back of the cave he paused by a sleeping bag as if to retrieve an item, but she hauled gently on the back of his sweatshirt. He went with her slowly, and when they reached the rear entrance took her proffered hand to boost him into the open air.

"Shoot anything that isn't ours," she said, and felt half-consciously that she was falling into speech patterns she knew from Carter.

She saw the boy's dilapidated sneakers clearly as he crouched and shuffled to the side under the cover of some low plants. The foliage was likely to shift under her hands, but the ledge wasn't too high to keep Six from planting her hands on the ground when she found some and pulling herself up. Directly ahead was the cliff face, while a narrow, grassy slope to the left ran between it and the low plateau. The Pelican had landed while the cave walls had muffled its sound.

The Covenant ship was still in the air and firing. A group of people had crowded into the Pelican's closed bay, but others lay dead on the ground, looking at a glance like piles of clothing. Six thought of shielding the boy from the sight but there was no way now, with Six ahead and drawing her rifle while he came to her side like a frightened dog. The feeling passed quickly: Spartans could not put huge stock in shielding children from war. By the coloring of their clothing, Six didn't think she saw Kristoff or Laura among the dead, but couldn't be sure.

"Follow close," she said, and headed down the hill. Fire from the Covenant ship shook the ground.

More Covenant, mostly Elites, massed around the front of the Pelican. That pilot must have been either brave or crazy to stay, but Jorge was leading a small group of armored survivors in front of the ship. They must have gone past the bay to let their unarmed companions through. Six didn't see Kristoff's tall form in the group of fighters.

She popped off a few shots at the Elites so that their attention would be split, but the bursts seemed weak and too fuzzy. Apparently immersion wasn't too good for alien technology.

"Stay behind me and get to the ship as soon as you can," she said to the boy.

"I've got this!" He pointed the gun vaguely in the direction of the enemy.

Six stopped, took a few more shots at the distant Elites. A few more peeled off from the group, and Jorge took the opportunity to yell for a couple of his ersatz troops to sprint to the Pelican.

"You never shot a gun before?" Six yelled over a combined sound wave of Pelican fire and battling Elites.

"No!"

She held out a palm. "Give it to me and get to the ship! My gun's almost out."

That made him feel enough like he was helping to kill his pride. He pressed the gun into her hand and ran with the next batch of survivors. Six took two shots and hit both Elites. One went down with the bullet in its mouth, a remarkable shot that she hadn't done on purpose. The other danced out of range, and Six advanced to bring herself level with Jorge and form a defensive wall of two. Most of the humans were safe now, and Six could see the masked pilot beating on the window to tell them to get inside. Joska was one of the last to get in safely. The pudgy cook was pumping a shotgun effectively.

As Six took down the second Elite and dodged out of the way of a third, Jorge signaled for them to pull the defensive line back toward the Pelican. Joska got the hint and backed into its shadow. Six kept firing at bobbing, roaring Elites, Jorge doing the same at her right. He'd taken hits, parts of his armor scratched gray and smoking black.

Suddenly the Covenant ship descended fast behind them. Ordinance meant to take down other armed vehicles tore up the ground, and Six found herself in the middle of an explosion of smoke, fire, and charred dirt. Her shields dropped to zero. She could just see Jorge and Joska's backs, and she followed them as her helmet gave her audio back and she could hear the Pelican's engine become a fierce whine in preparation for takeoff. Jorge and Joska disappeared into the bay. Jorge said "Aislinn?", breathing hard, and then the Covenant ship was right next to her. The Pelican pilot must have been yelling as the human craft lifted off. Six jumped for the bay as the Pelican rose and turned, and Jorge leaned out of the bay, people packing in behind him.

With the gold-flecked purple sides of the Covenant ship flying past her, Six willed her hands to hit his.

A thick Elite arm lunged out of the Covenant troop bay and grabbed her around the middle. Without hesitation she twisted around and shot the alien twice in the face, splashing herself and the other aliens with the blue blood.

Instead of dropping her, the alien pulled her inside the alien troop bay as it fell backwards. She landed heavily on her back on top of it in a crowd of Grunts and two Elites.

The problem with Grunts was they went off like fireworks. With the trees whipping by now ten feet away, she shot the nearest Grunt and the explosion took out the methane packs of another two. The inside of the troop bay, a weirdly organic sienna to begin with, filled with smoke and blue sparks. Six found herself taking dubious shelter in a corner along with the two Elites. Out the open drop hatch she saw the Pelican, laboring for height, peeling off toward the back of the Covvie ship until she couldn't see it any more. The loss of TEAMCOM was suddenly frustrating and frightening.

When the smoke cleared she pushed to the other side of the bay among the broken Grunt bodies and fired at the Elites. She had only five rounds left in the boy's secondhand pistol. The hidden Covvie pilot was keeping the ship steady, not trying to shake her out of the bay.

Six bent her knees to steady herself on the deck, then started forward. A blue, mottled energy shield popped into existence in front of her. Through it she saw the Elites bobbing their heads and guffawing, the sound muffled. It didn't make sense for the Covenant to try to take prisoners, so she started looking for a way out before they shot her like a fish in a barrel. Six backed off from the energy field and felt the ship start to tilt to gain altitude, but the Elites just looked at her. They wouldn't capture humans. Would they? They never had before, but this was a very new war. She glared, and they just glared right back.

* * *

In the Elite barracks, Lassa sat up straight in her borrowed bed. Long awake after the soldiers' reveille, she had nevertheless been surprised when the door opened and the shipmaster swept in shouting. The two door guards were lurking behind the shipmaster, both their heads low. The shipmaster stomped toward her, and she felt awake in the same way that she would have if someone had shone a light in her eyes.

"I hear that you're telling my soldiers you were sent by the World's Oracle himself."

It seemed like a good idea at a time floated through Lassa's head and was discarded. Besides, it wasn't right to lie to an elder. It wasn't up to the Sangheili standard. She said, "Yes I did."

"And we both know this isn't true."

She lowered her eyes for a moment, but then met his gaze again. She often cried in situations like this. Tears were expected. But the shipmaster served as a decent tear prevention system: she refused to cry in front of him because surely he would use it against her. She knew that crying got her pity sometimes, and pity was useful. She wouldn't get it here.

She said, "Yes."

He lowered his brows, and grabbed her around the top of the arm. His fingers met. "Let's see what he thinks about that."


	31. Purgatory

Hey, I'm sorry this is taking so long. Having a new job and Red vs Blue are taking up most of my time. However, I do plan to finish this story by November. I knew what was going to happen in this chapter but found when I started writing it that it didn't make a lot of sense if put in the order I originally intended.

Oh, and **SurferSquid**? This is the chapter where Relk is crowned Fire Lord.

* * *

XXXI.

The Sangheili kept careful watch over Six as the ship flew. From inside the energy field she couldn't see much of the ground below, just the pale blue sky. Her HUD said they were heading west. She wished she'd learned more of the alien language from Relk.

She tried talking to her captors anyway. "Hey. This isn't normal Elite behavior. I appreciate the not killing me thing, but would you like to explain?"

Naturally, no response came. The Elites hunched and looked at one another; one idly picked dirt out from under his nails. The bodies of the other Covenant who had not fallen out of the ship were still lying there, piled in a corner. If they gave off a scent Six couldn't smell it through the energy cage. One of the Elites seemed more incited by the deaths than the other, looking angrily at the bodies and then back to Six.

She still had the sword, although it was useless against the energy field. She patted the handle as she looked at the nervous Elite.

"You," she said. "You're next."

* * *

The Pelican rocked. Crowded into the rear bay with Joska, Laura, and the others, Jorge gripped an overhead strap and looked out at the trees sliding by on the ground. He took one step toward them and the floor tipped again.

"There's too many people," the pilot said over the comm. "Everybody better suck it in if we're gonna get back to the cruiser."

"I'm leaving," Jorge said. The ship was high enough now that he could see the whole glassed city and the brown plains beyond, with a purple dot that might be a Covenant base in the middle of them. The alien troop transport was a shiny, lozenge-shaped craft in the distance. "Take us down again, farther to the north where the Covvies haven't sent any troops. I'm gonna bail."

"Do what he says," Kristoff said, and others in the crowd mumbled.

The pilot said, "We can only drop so fast." They started down, the trees getting easier to see and emptiness seeming to form a bubble in Jorge's stomach.

He said, "I won't help you anyway. This ship isn't built for this many people."

The people around him were afraid of going back to the planet they had narrowly escaped. Some glared and muttered among themselves, the words hard to hide in a few feet of space. Marta held Laura close.

Kristoff looked at Jorge. "Good luck. You won't be able to find us again."

"If the Covenant fully capture this world the UNSC will have a lot more to worry about than the Insurrection." Jorge gripped the handhold on the ceiling tighter.

"If?" Joska said loudly in Hungarian. "I think it's already taken."

The engines growled, parts scraping as the pilot maneuvered to the side of a mountain at a slightly higher elevation than Laura's house had been.

The pilot yelled. "Can you jump?"

"Yes," Jorge replied, then looked back at Kristoff. "I'm going to find Six." He thought about promising that he wouldn't go after the Insurrectionists, but could not do it: if they met on a battlefield years later he would probably not remember these faces. He said, "Good luck."

He moved carefully to the edge of the troop bay, and when the ship was about ten feet over an open patch of ground, he knocked on the wall. The engine roared as the pilot slowed down; she could not risk stalling the Pelican completely.

Jorge jumped. The fall was fast, and Jorge rolled when he hit the ground, feeling the gel layer of his armor cushion his shoulders and hips. Dirt flew and spattered against his armor, and as he carefully raised himself onto hands and knees he saw that he had dug a furrow in the rich, dark earth.

He watched the Insurrectionist craft lift, turn, and fly away. Three Covenant Seraphs that he hadn't noticed before streaked toward it from two corners of the sky, undoubtedly called in as soon as the Pelican approached the ground if not before.

Jorge stood and watched as the pilot who had set him down juked and sped up toward the clouds. The Pelican shot back, filling their vicinity of the sky with blue smoke edged in piling gray. Maybe it was Kristoff on the guns, or maybe the boy Six had escorted out of the cave. They hit the cloud layer as the Seraphs streaked closer, and then Jorge could see nothing except small black dots and flashes.

"Bless your souls," Jorge muttered. "Rest in peace."

He started walking down toward the city. Just before he went under cover of the trees he saw the Pelican, trailing red flames and black smoke, fall down toward the east.

* * *

The ship holding Six set down on a dirt landing field surrounded by yellow grass. Her Elite guards were met by an escort of Elites and Hunters, the vulnerable points on the giant aliens covered by formal-looking golden armor. Six wondered whether she was a prisoner or an esteemed guest; the lack of death attempts so far almost vouched for the latter. Still, everyone was heavily armed, and Six kept a grip on her own weapon as the force field went down.

The Elites gestured her forward, and she hopped out of the ship. She itched to attack, but she knew that the best thing to do in a hostage situation, if this was one, was to comply.

The more she saw of the Elites the more she was sure that they were headed to some ritual function that required the permissions or assuaged the wrath of their gods, and she was not interested in sticking around for it. The aliens grumbled and snuffled in their own language, and she was reminded of how she had grown used to reading Relk's expressions, at least minimally: these Elites were truly alien, and unable to interpret.

But they had let her keep the sword.

There were too many of them and she could very well die here, but when she decided to attack it was a split-second thought, brain chemicals kicking into gear so fast that her consciousness barely followed. She drew the sword and slashed out at the nearest Elite, scoring a red rent in his stomach below the armor.

The sky was graying, darkening quickly as storm clouds snuck up from behind mountains to the north. The storm might arrived in a few minutes or never come over the mountains at all.

The Elite that Six had struck fell back but then reeled forward and hit at her clumsily with its weapon. The body of the gun clanged against her helmet. She shook it off, but heard two Hunters lumbering in from the back of the procession. She looked back and forth at them, but even in that time the Elites were parting to allow the Hunters to stomp through like war machines. Six danced backward.

A green glow filled up her vision as a plasma bolt narrowly missed her, and then the second Hunter was close, its studded metal shield rising up like a wall in front of her. She only had time to think about how much she hated Hunters - they could make an open plain feel like a corner - when that metal plate rocked up under her chin and everything went black.

Six woke up in a cell. A cut on her face twinged as she breathed, but no blood came off on her hand when she lifted it to check the damage. She was surprised there wasn't more damage if the Hunters or Elites had tried to get the armor off her, and shuddered. They hadn't succeeded, though, and she was relieved. Keeping human technology away from the Covenant was one of the primary goals of the Winter Contingency, and with what she had - especially her helmet - the Covenant could deduce all sorts of things about human anatomy and communications. With a twinge she realized that the helmet was the one part they had taken from her; it was lying on the floor, though, as if the Elites found it too unclean to even touch and rolled it away.

The cell was small, only a few feet longer than the span of her arms. A brown piece of cloth was lying on the yellow, faux-stone floor, and when Six gingerly picked it up she saw that it was a shapeless cloak made of some kind of gelatinous-feeling fiber.

The door of the cell had rounded edges like most Covenant architecture and was almost transparent. She could see the shape of a wall beyond the filmy surface. It almost looked like she was inside a ship, but the deck was not moving.

Disorientation frightened her, and she looked around for an outlet or a weapon more out of habit than of hope. Shapes moved in the hallway beyond her.

She stepped back from the door as a group of aliens milled about outside and then opened the door. The Elite that looked in was smaller than six had expected, barely the height of the Spartan, and wore a colorful cloth outfit instead of armor. Its voice when it spoke was a high-pitched bark, and Six immediately assumed it was female.

This Elite held a needle, one long silver spike clutched in her nobby hand.

Six jumped for her. The other Elites were too crowded around one another to get inside the door, so Six's first hit connected hard with the underside of the girl Elite's chin. The Elite screeched, and Six felt the needle slam against her shoulder. The armor more than held, but Six raised a hand to grab the Elite's weapon and protect the back of her neck.

It half worked. The Elite jerked away in an uncontrolled flail that dragged the needle across Six's ear, nicking her skin. The Elite spoke, her words hissed and angry but completely unintelligible. She pushed away, and two of the bigger, more heavily armed Elites lurched into the room.

Six scooped the mat and her helmet off the floor. She threw the mat over the head of the female Elite and plucked the needle from her grasp, immediately releasing it to stab it into the face of the nearest soldier. Looking down she saw an opening in the press of bodies where she could roll so she did, realizing only midway through that there were probably guns pointed at her out here. But the Elites had seemed to want her alive - she rose from the roll to find a plasma rifle at face level and swung her helmet into the face of the one who was wielding it, gaining only a momentary pause.

The female pushed through the crowd, and as reluctant as they were to shoot one of their own, more Elites were raising their guns. There were four in total, almost too many to fit comfortable in the narrow hallway. It still looked like the shiny walls of a spaceship were all around Six, but she thought she could see natural light coming from around a corner up ahead.

Her first instinct was to run and get some distance between her and the enemy. The armor would take multiple shots, but it was already damaged, and she had no weapons but her hands.

Luckily for her, then, the female Elite seemed bent on rapid pursuit. She shoved out in front of her slower compatriots. They seemed to be some sort of honor guard for her, but Six had no idea what this had to do with her. Everything with Elites was so ritual.

Blood from her ear suddenly released from where it had been pooling and flowed down her neck in a thin, hot line. The Elites weren't shooting, hesitant to have one of their own in the way.

The youngest one moved forward out of the crowd slowly, with a needle in each hand. Her words were garbled nonsense.

Six raised her fists.

The alien lunged forward with the needles raised. She was thinner than Relk; when she reached out with one needle it wasn't too difficult for Six to grab her hand and squeeze.

Her gray lips drew back from her teeth in a snarl as bones in her hand snapped under the armor. They traded a few strikes with the opposite hand, the needle grazing Six's skin, and then Six hit the alien square under the jaw and knocked her back. She stumbled, one hand going for the floor but still clutching the needle, and seemed to realize the pain she was in; her eyes widened.

An Elite behind her fired. The green plasma burst almost grazed Six's shoulder.

She glanced around, taking a stock of her situation, and found that the only place she could go was back. If she stopped to wrench one of the needles from the female's hand she could be shot while she was bent down.

However, her armor could take a beating. She waded through a few shots and slammed her elbow into an Elite's face, grabbing its weapon with the other hand and spinning away. The Elite's hand didn't quite break or let go; she felt its hot breath snap at her cheek. Another alien in the back of the group made a loud noise, and in the thick of them now Six heard Hunter footsteps coming down the hall.

Plasma shots were exploding all around her now, and meeting Hunters in a small hallway was not on Six's to-do list today.

She ran, with a cry of "Gotta go!" failing to translate but relaxing her. The corridor gently curved behind her, so that she had just a few long steps and a space of a few breaths before the Elites appeared behind her. She jammed her mask over her head, the small metal tabs inside pulling at her skin before it all settled comfortably.

Luckily, the walls changed. A few feet from her there was a wall made not of the purple lacquer found on Covenant spaceships, but a light orange curtain. Muttering sounds came from behind it. The cloth was just nearly transparent, enough so that she could see dark shadows moving behind it. She realized her vision was blurring: something had gotten through her shield. She took a few deep breaths.

The Elites shoved at one another in their eagerness to get around the corner and to her. The female was nowhere in sight.

Six considered ducking under the curtain, thought about how she had no weapons and a failing shield, and did it anyway.

Immediately after she lifted up the curtain she could barely see for the shoulder of an Elite in the way, swathed in a red-orange cloak nearly the same color as the curtain. He grunted, but was looking forward so intently that he took a second to realize she wasn't one of his kind.

It was a throne room. She had pushed her way into a crowd of unarmed Elites wearing orange and yellow robes. Crowds three deep lined a wide open floor space that shone white with flecks of purple, and at the top of the aisle was a dais. The room was mostly quiet except for the swishing of clothes, with everyone paying attention to the figure on the dais. Others sat on the stairs or stood on the sides of the dais holding what looked like dark purple combination palm fronds and decorative runes. On the dais sat one Elite that looked a bit smaller than the others because it was not entirely swathed in robes; her gaze travelled up its seemingly incongruous armor to its long neck and mild expression until she realized that she was recognizing, if not the face, that long-jawed, worried expression.

She didn't speak, but her eyebrows shot up and the word tolled like a gong in her head. _Relk?_

Then a warrior pushed through the curtain behind her. She grabbed the cloak of the Elite next to her and found that he was unarmed, his body unexpectedly soft; a courtier, not a warrior. Of course a dominantly religious culture would have those. She held onto his arm long enough to push him into the warrior and send the courtiers next to him into a shuffle. They gave off little hoots she couldn't understand, but there was the ineffable sense that they were trying to be _polite. _In contrast, the warrior was just grunting, the others trying to shove in behind him.

Six dashed into the middle of the hall. The warriors were yelling now, the courtiers getting in each others' way in an effort to get out of the warriors' way, the Elite language growling and clattering around her so that she couldn't pick out any of the words she knew. Six dashed up the empty corridor as nervous courtiers started walking into it. She glanced away from them to the opposite end of the corridor and saw two Jackal guards turn in exact synchronicity and level their weapons at her. In one long stride her boot brushed the low edge of the dais. The girl Elite was emerging from the press of warriors too now, dazed and angry.

She could get a better, albeit quick, look at the Elite in the place of honor, and also noticed what appeared to be servants in light brown cloaks behind him, the same color as the cloth she had found in the cell. He definitely looked like Relk, although he had been sitting back in the chair like he was comfortable.

The idea was confirmed when he recognized her. His eyes widened and he raised one frail, three-fingered hand. He spluttered something with a lot of spit in it that sounded vaguely like her number.

Then Relk said something that sounded like a command, and the warriors, including the girl, stopped. Maybe her eyes were wider than the rest of them, as if she too felt she were in the presence of a deity. Some courtiers fell to their knees.

Six skidded to a stop.

Then she jumped onto the dais, snatched the sword from Relk's side, dug her fingers under his collarbone, and activated the sword in front of his throat.

Relk spasmed back against the chair like a frightened animal. Six surveyed the aliens. The ones who were bowing looked up; the warriors grunted and hesitated, afraid to go further toward the throne. The female didn't seem to have their sense of piety, though. She dashed in front of the room and spoke in her high-pitched voice.

"That's my demon!"

Six recognized these words well enough, now that warriors were shushing courtiers and the girl's squeak was washing everything else out.

Relk said, "Hello," in Sangheili, into the silence.

The girl made a demand.

Relk waved it away.

"Let me go," he muttered in gargling English, "and I'll explain it all."

"And you'll let _me_ go." She also kept her voice low. No need to encourage all of them to attack her. There were still some servants shuffling behind her, and she hunched her shoulders, knowing that her armor could take at least one strike but not many more. No one except herself and Relk could speak English here, as far as she knew: maybe it sounded like they were speaking in tongues. "That's the important part."

"Yes. Do what I do."

She tipped her head.

He said, "No. Do...be small."

"I don't understand," she whispered fiercely, and then he threw his hands up into the air.

She flinched and hauled back on her hold, pushing him further against the chair. He gulped but kept muttering things, half in English and half Sangheili, and she realized that he was pretending to either pray or be crazy. He was shaking too: acting did not come naturally to him but he had had to learn it since she had seen him last. She had a grudging respect for that, or, at least, could understand it as something a human would do. He had grown. Whatever had lead him to be the center of attention in this place had forced him to grow or to face consequences he feared even more than being the center of attention.

He pushed on her arms and she unwrapped them from around his shoulders. He turned and pushed on her back and she walked with him behind her, out to the front of the stage. It was a show, she realized, just like the dais and the cloaked courtiers, and for some reason the aliens around Relk were willing to buy into the fiction.

He patted the air and spoke in words she could not understand, and she looked at them all.

When he waved his hand, they bowed.

After a second, she almost laughed. This was _Relk_, right? She could feel him shivering behind her, and although she wasn't feeling so fantastic either with those Jackals' guns still pointed at her heart the eternality of his cowardice reassured her.

She was a Spartan, and to parlay with the enemy was not a tactic she had been taught, but she thought of Relk as a friend now, somehow, and Spartans trusted friends.

He waved again; they bowed again.

He pushed on her shoulder and she turned around. The servants there were small and drab; she could not tell their gender. They moved aside and she saw that the fourth wall of the room was also a curtain.

She stepped forward, confident of escape, and in a moment Relk followed her.


	32. Fate or the War

XXXII.

When Relk was rescued from the caves the officer of the invading force told him that he'd had a religious experience, a message from the Forerunners, and after remembering his thought as he looked at Jun in the crystal's hiding place he realized that, yes, he had. He'd realized that the humans weren't all that bad.

And that wasn't the message the Prophets were looking for, so it wasn't going to get him this fancy appointment with his own office and his own servants and his own lock on his door.

So he didn't tell them that particular revelation.

Instead, he told them that the Forerunners had granted him - well, what hadn't they granted him? He could measure the weight of the universe and knew how the galaxies began. He grew poetic, although no less hesitant, in his desperation.

He saw how his people were looking for a leader, although he was more provincial than anything else. He saw no San 'Shyuum and was never invited to leave the planet.

No one talked about leaving Reach, this fertile, newly conquered, half-holy land with the glass scars still smoldering in it.

He discovered that as the World's Oracle he had access so many resources he had never thought to ask for. Although he was the only one bearing that title since he was the only one to find a Forerunner crystal, shipmasters all over the world eagerly spoke to him.

Talking in front of them, or even in front of his crowds of devout followers who had appeared out of nowhere like mushrooms after rain, was at first nauseatingly difficult. He could not show his fear, though, because what priest was afraid? and so slowly he began to stop faking the courage and actually have it, in the back of his head where it was barely noticed.

He got his throne and barely had to make any decisions, and this satisfied his simple desire to not be dead.

In the cave, the Elite officers had changed their attitudes so quickly he thought they were joking. He was holy for finding the stone, he was touched beyond mortal understanding.

It could have been a joke, the elevation of the fool before his slaughter as practiced in some cultures, but after they took the blue stone away from him they gave him new clothes and an Unggoy to dress him.

"You don't have to do that, really," Relk had stammered, but the little alien kept patting him with a scented washcloth.

After he had been ensconced in his throne room there had been rumors that a San "Shyuum was being sent to test the veracity of his new prophet, and Relk had stayed inside his bedchamber for a few hours, pleading divine preoccupation while he panicked.

There wasn't exactly anywhere to run.

After some time and no San 'Shyuum came he began to feel safe from both the Prophets and the Sanghili, and almost to enjoy himself.

When that girl was brought to him, angry and prickly, he did not doubt that she could overthrow him verbally. Instead of fighting him, though, she wanted to kill demons.

He asked her what experience she had had in war.

She told him none.

With some guilt, he gave her permission to do what she wished with any Spartan that came to the complex. This decision stemmed partially from pity for her - any one of Noble Team would trounce her - and partially for Six and Jorge. They did not need another enemy.

So when a demon was captured, he was certain someone was going to be hurt, and was not reassured that it would not be himself.

This was a new emotion, but then, so was godhood.

* * *

When Six was lead into the retiring room behind the curtain she saw immediately that the whole building she had been brought to was constructed as an annex of the hull of a crashed ship. One wall of the room was made of the curved, purple material she remembered from _The Long Night of Solace_'s exterior walls. Two other walls were curtained. The room was small, obviously tucked into an available corner instead of constructed specifically for a purpose. One stool sat slightly off-center, its wide seat obviously designed for heavy Sangheili bodies. As a Spartan armored specifically to fight them, Six tended to ignore the fact that the average Elite was naturally three times as tall and strong as most humans.

Two Grunts parted the curtains and stepped into the room in front of Six. They had lowered orange fans, but raised them like weapons as soon as they saw her.

Relk shook his head. She could see that the Grunts were armed with plasma pistols, but held the fans in two hands so she had little reason to worry. One Grunt started fanning Relk and chittering nervously. Relk shooed then out, then turned to Six. He opened his mouth a few times without coming up with anything to say.

That expression was universal, but Six was struck with a fear that with their inability to converse in one another's languages they might be stuck with facial expressions, and even those might not translate between cultures. For the first time in a while she looked at Relk's face and saw something that was a complete Other, about whom she could assume nothing.

She felt that she could trust him, though. Fate or the war kept pushing them together, from their language lessons in the cave to the fruits of those labors now, and she had almost forgotten that Relk was supposed to be trying to kill her.

She started the conversation instead of worrying about it. "Why are you their king?"

"Their what?" He tipped his head.

"Their leader, their..." she waved her hands, exasperated. No one had ever said communicating with an alien would be easy. Repeating words certainly wouldn't help. "Leader. Commander. Priest?"

"World's Oracle," he said in Sangheili.

"What does that mean?"

He gestured at the walls, the floor, the Grunts. "All of this."

"So, it's a term of respect. It's the analog."

He did not seem to understand. "I will English," he said.

"You'll have to practice a little more," she said.

"Yes." Without moving his legs he reached over to the stool and dragged it scraping on the ground. When he sat down Six pressed her heels together, suddenly conscious that her standing made her seem like a supplicant.

"Just tell me what's going on here," she said. "Can the others understand us?" The walls were too thin, the crowd too close: she could hear them bellowing, some Elites trying to calm others, the female's high-pitched, frantic screams.

Relk took his time answering and in masticating English words into near-illegibility. "I am on your side! I was taken out of the cave. The...stone, it gave me power."

"The blue stone? Halsey's blue crystal?"

"Yes." Relk nodded, his jaws clamped down tight on the word.

"And now they worship you?"

"They...give me this place."

A sense of power filled her. This room was a sheltered island in a storm: she could operate here. She had a chance to get out. "That's great!"

The Grunts flinched and looked at one another, revealing the black sides of their short, masked faces. Relk patted the air and made spitting sounds that she realized were him trying to shush her. She quieted down, but felt the sense of freedom rest inside her, like a forgotten pleasure newly remembered.

"So you instructed them to let me go?"

Relk shrugged, letting his hands flop down onto his lap uselessly. "Not exactly. I...that would be too obvious. I gave you to Lassa. I thought she would keep you alive."

"Was she the one who chased me?"

"Yes."

Relk actually sighed, more like a dog than like a person. "I told her she could torture you."

"What?" Six stood up.

"Don't do that," Relk said, and patted the air. "They probably think I'm torturing you now."

"Then I'd probably be making a lot of noise." Six folded her arms.

Relk said, "I couldn't do it myself. A coward in all things, you know? I thought you could beat her anyway."

Six tossed her head. "Well, I'm glad that one didn't work out. Were you ever intending to rescue me?"

"You would have remained alive."

"Thanks."

"At least I had a good excuse to keep you alive at all." Six didn't think there was a lot of antagonism in his tone, but she couldn't quite tell. Relk continued, "That girl mostly wanted vengeance."

"Oh good," Six said sarcastically. "So what are we going to do now?"

Relk shrugged again. Six hadn't thought he could look more boneless. "You could stay."

"Stay here and be part of your court? They think I'm a trophy."

"They would feed us."

"No!"

"They think you're a trophy because of me. I told her to keep you alive."

"So you keep saying. I suppose I should say thank you. Do you have my weapons?"

"In our armory."

"Did you tell them to take those too?"

"You couldn't keep them! We only let you keep the armor because no one knew how to get it off and it seemed...ceremonial. As are a lot of things around here."

"Including you having a throne room?" She glared.

He looked at the floor. "I found the thing."

"The stone."

"I took it. I had it when the Elites found me. So...they thought I was...their god?"

Six almost laughed. Halfway through suppressing it Relk did the nervous patting gesture again and she remembered that she was supposed to be hurting, so quieted down in what she hoped was a gasp open to interpretation.

"It okay," said Relk, and waved a hand. He still had his typical gangly appearance, but seemed a little more composed now. Maybe it was an act, but he had managed to do it. "I am an emissary of the Forerunners." He pronounced 'I am' so fast that it was almost an unintentional contraction, an audible example of how the language might have developed in Earth's past. He parted his lips - maybe a smile - and raised his eyebrows in a way that made his spiky head armor lift like a chuffed bird. "I can do whatever I want."

Six sat back. She had nearly forgotten that he was technically the enemy. The wound on her face was closing up, beginning to tighten the skin around it. "And do you believe that?"

Relk bobbed his head a few times in what might have been a small human nod, but like most things he did there was no certainty in it, and she waited for a more definite reply.

She didn't get one.

"We could walk out," said Relk.

Six raised an eyebrow that he couldn't see. "We could just leave?"

"Yes," Relk said matter-of-factly. "I am their leader, until another emissary comes from Sangheilios to...test me, or something."

"Wait. If you're their leader, why can't you call off the war?"

"I don't lead _all of them. _Just this planet. Shipmasters won't listen to me. They think it is silly to have a religious figurehead at all, but I was the first to find the greatest Forerunner artifact on Reach. So it chose me."

"Reach did."

"Yes."

Six thought about the closeness she had felt to the planet itself as her tour went on: how she got to know which plants broke with louder noises or released more sap, how she learned the length of the days, slightly different from Onyx or Earth. She could almost understand the belief that a planet chose its own emissary.

She said, "Jorge is still alive out there."

"Where?"

"I don't know. He took off with some Insurrectionists." She wasn't sure whether that word would translate.

Relk passed it by, indicating by his silence that she should go on.

"We could find him if our long-range maps work, but they don't. But that's because you took them down. The Covenant did. Do you have anything intact that could help us? Radios, computers-something I could use to get into the network that's left. Or your network."

"All blasphemous technologies were destroyed," said Relk.

"Yeah, but you know it doesn't work like that. There's got to be a scientist examining our computers so you can learn more about us." _All that information about Earth_, she thought, _that we try so hard to keep from you. _"This is Covenant headquarters, right?"

"Yes."

"So find me those scientists."

He did. After some quiet conversation with his Grunts he met with another Sangeheili. Relk stood in the doorway so that the scientist could not see her, nor presumably, she him. She wondered whether the crowd at the stage had dispersed, who had started damage control once their priest went into conference with the enemy. She wondered where the female with the needles had gone, and assumed that she was a specialized guard trained in the army. She yawned, flexed aching limbs, and stretched. She found herself in the unique position of almost falling asleep behind the obscuring blanket of her helmet inside a Covenant base.

Then Relk brought her a battered commlink, its square black sides dented to silver. Six accepted it gravely, wondering how its owner had died. It had probably belonged to a marine, one of thousands who died or evacuated on this world. The thought of their deaths made her trepidatious.

"You're sure they won't stop us?"

Relk wrung his hands. He said, like a child hiding from a teacher, "No. We're divine."

"You," she said absently as she activated the marine's comm and paused a little on remembering Noble Team's radio passcode. "You're the one who got called divine."

She leaned her chin against the ridged edge of the comm, almost touching it with her lips. "This is Noble Six calling for Noble Five, please confirm signal."

She heard static, with maybe the sound of Jorge's huffing voice underneath.

"Please confirm."

He broke through the static, his voice marching on without hesitation or any suggestion that he had recognized her. "Noble Five on TEAMCOMM. If you're UNSC, meet me at Esztergomi Sétálóutca." After the same shushing syllables she remembered from Sara Sorvad's name, Jorge cut the connection.

Six would have expected him to do nothing less on an alien world, but still she sat back as if the sudden lack of static had been a physical wall. Images flashed through her mind as she thought of how he could hide himself -stealth, hologram, or just rubble. Then she started working on the fact that she did not know the landmark he had named. The words were unfamiliar, solid and smooth as rock, and useless without context.

She wasn't sure whether Covenant could read human languages either, but she mentally spelled the word out. Eshtergoumi Setalauka. The first word sounded familiar - maybe that was the name of the city.

She said, "I need a map."

"Can you call your shipmasters?"

"No. That signal requires satellites that you've already taken down. This only works because it's boosted by our suits."

He looked at her armor with renewed interest. She feared that the Covenant could try to reverse-engineer it: maybe some of them all ready had.

Relk, however, wasn't concentrating on that. "Your people could take me away too."

"Yeah, they could, if it worked out. Do you want to go away?"

He ignored the question, which she took as a yes. "The suit," he said, "gives you magic powers."

"Those aren't the right words for it," she said before she could think about it. "For an advanced race, you've got to know how technology works." _Of course you must - that's why we've taken such pains to avoid you capturing it. _Six had helped gut Kat's armor before she was burned and buried in it. The Covenant had smarts, and, more importantly, other intelligent species working for them. The Elites weren't the brains of the outfit, but they were instructed to pass any technology along.

"I know how it works," said Relk, and left it at that.

Six's thoughts settled on another one of her problems. "What are we going to do about that girl? She won't let me leave."

He looked sharply at her. "Could you defeat her?"

"Yes. I mean, especially if you gave me a weapon. If we were one on one? Sure."

He rapped on the leg of the stool, and one of the Grunts entered, holding a plasma pistol instead of a fan. He took the gun, and, when the little alien had left, handed it to Six.

"Won't I have to pretend to be your captive?"

"Bluff? Lie?" He did not seem to understand 'pretend'.

"Yes," she said.

"Yes. Or, pretend you are a reformed demon. You believe in the Forerunners now."

She declined to mention that believing that those ancient aliens existed was not near the same as believing they were divine. It would be hard to question their actual existence after seeing the weird properties of the crystal and hearing Halsey expound upon them. "Will they believe me?"

"They believed me."

She turned the plasma pistol over. "I had a sword," she said, disappointed.

"It's gone."

"Reinstated as a holy weapon?"

"Or accepted as a payment for catching you."

"Got it. A finder's fee. You don't talk as...reverently about the Forerunners as I expected. Do you still...believe?"

"Yes." He looked her in the eye, his dark pupils barely visible under his dark blue headdress.

"But you're tricking them."

"Yes. I have to live! I teach you...best way to live."

Six chuckled. "Right. You're way to live? You have been good at surviving. But...don't you worry that the other priests could have been doing the same?"

"Priest?"

She tried to think of the word he had called himself, but could not pronounce it confidently enough. "Leaders. Number one to the Forerunners."

"Oracles," he repeated.

Six nodded as she recognized the word.

"No," he said. "They are holy."

"Okay." It was difficult for her to grasp such arbitrary faith, but she thought that if she had not been raised without religion entirely it might have been different. "So if I walk out of here with a weapon and you say I've converted, they'll believe you?"

"Converted?"

"That I won't hurt anyone."

"Yes."

"Okay." She doubted Relk's wisdom, when it seemed likely that he could be as clueless about his own clerical system as he was about anything else. However, it sounded like a good option. At worst, she would be fighting out of her again. She thought of Jorge in a city surely swarming with alien scouts.

"That was easy." She pursed her lips, looked down at the gun with a furrowed brow, realized that the expression she was trying to form but couldn't quite get out was a smile. She was getting tired, finally: feeling the war.

Relk did not notice, which helped. She didn't want to take the time to notice either.

"We need a ship," she said.

He said, "I will get you one."

She glanced at the back curtain, where the Grunts would be waiting to escort their revered leader, so full of faith, it seemed, that they would believe their prophet when he told them a captured demon was harmless.

Relk looked back at the orange curtain, the confusion of his courtiers still audible behind it. Surely they were waiting for something, an announcement, a proclamation of his success.

He stood up, his head hanging low with fear so that he almost matched Six's height. She parted the curtain, and he followed her out.

* * *

As far as the UNSC knew, Reach was dead.

The Covenant were scavengers digesting the bones.

No signal could get into Reach; no signal could get out.

That did not mean that ONI wasn't monitoring them, just in case, just to keep track of Earth's lost, precious resource.

One day, a signal went out.

Admiral Margaret Paragonsky looked at the faux-teak of her desk and saw a sharp red light flick on.


	33. Talking Partners

**XXXIII**

Before they regrouped, Relk stepped down from the dais. Six followed, soon surrounded by Elites with their curved necks and piggish eyes. All of the Elites stepped aside for Relk.

The crowd muttered and Six straightened up, tense and suddenly aware of the nearly solid press of red dots on her HUD in the confines of the aisle. Relk shrank back from her but did not seem to want to touch the crowd either, as if he were equally afraid of his own devotees. He and Six began to walk forward slowly, a solemn two-person procession.

Near the back of the room an armored Elite emerged through the door, his eyes resting first on the empty dais before finding Relk. Six rewrapped her fingers around her gun, feeling her arm and shoulder relax. It was nice to know in advance when your enemy was coming. The elaborately-dressed Elite pushed through the crowd toward the stage. His face was caged in a helmet that closed over his jaws like flower petals, hiding the alien proportions and making his head look like a battering ram.

"That's the shipmaster." Relk tried to whisper. He managed a low gargle.

Six watched the Shipmaster approach. He huffed at her, like a horse. She almost expected spittle to hit her faceplate. He said something in Sangheili, a long sentence. She was starting to recognize where the words broke; the language was becoming more familiar now, like an Earthling language she occasionally heard a marine speak instead of something completely alien. She still required Relk to translate, though, and looked at him as he replied to the Shipmaster.

In a moment, Relk turned to her and spoke in English. "The Shipmaster, he...knows the soldiers are not happy that you are here. There has been fighting in the ranks, and they are talking about other Sangheili infiltrating, like Lassa did. We must remove you from this base."

"That works for me," Six said, looking back and forth between Relk and the Shipmaster. She wanted to get out of her more than anything. If she could get to a computer, she could find out what Jorge's instructions meant. The word was slippery in her thoughts, but she held onto it: Sataloutca.

Relk said, "I will tell him that we wish to leave."

"Good. Do that."

The two Elites exchanged words. Six watched the Shipmaster's body language, but either he was cowed in the presence of a holy man or Relk had gained a lot of mental strength in a short time, because both of them stood in the same way, brusque and confident with their big feet spread flat on the floor as if they were ready to fight one another. After the conversation, Relk looked at Six.

Relk said, "He says he's done a lot so far to try to make his own life easier. Letting Lassa in, and...he is unhappy about me. He doesn't want to keep feeding me. The Forerunners could provide for their own, he said."

That gave Six an impression of the Shipmaster as a businessman. He had his army base to oversee, and he wanted to keep the delicate balance of morale in place. However, she also knew that the easiest way that Sangheili knew to keep peace was to kill the people who were causing the dissent. Maybe the Shipmaster of this crashed base on Reach was a radical who wanted to try other options first.

"Tell him we'll get out of his hair if he gives us a ship."

"Out of his...he does not have hair."

"It means we won't be his problem any more."

"Tell him we won't be a problem?"

"Tell him," Six said, looking directly at Relk now. She realized that the Shipmaster was following their dialogue even though he couldn't comprehend it, like someone watching a sporting match go back and forth without quite knowing all the rules. He would be able to get enough information about who was winning by the way the ball flew.

She said "Tell him to give us a vehicle. Please. Then we will not bother him any more. Tell him he'll go back to being the authority in this base."

The Shipmaster liked that. Six could tell when Relk conveyed it, because the Shipmaster tilted his head like he wanted what passed for his ears scratched. For once, he seemed to actually relax.

She thought that he might be telling Relk he was going to wash his hands of him.

Relk was fine with that.

The two aliens' conversation went on for what felt like ten minutes to Six but was really no more than two. The clock in her HUD continued to display the time in sedate green lettering, and she paid acute attention to her own small, filtered breathing that she could hear between the grumbling voices.

Relk sighed. It was a long sound, traveling all the way up his saurian neck. He looked at a space somewhere between Six and the Shipmaster's right shoulder. The Sangheili crowd was still around, although they seemed less interested in the conversation than in Relk's presence. They maintained a ritual silence, heads barely moving to watch the speakers. Six imagined that if anything Relk said was taken as doctrine, there wasn't much room for suspense or debate among the crowd. Other Elites were still ogling her, surely seeing working Spartan armor up close for the first time, and she became conscious again of the messy scar of plastic on the armor over her thigh.

Relk said, "He says we can go."

She kept monitoring her breaths, in and out, even. She felt for a moment a strong, sick desire to have a team around her: Jorge especially, but the other Nobles too, or her squad-mates from Onyx.

The Shipmaster moved to Relk's left, putting the Elite who was almost part of Noble Team between himself and Six. She didn't like the idea that he could threaten Relk from there, but she liked that he had moved farther away. The three of them marched down the path the Shipmaster cleared and toward the door, the assembled Elites still watching in their strange, reverent silence. She thought that it was odd how different they could be in the church or on the battlefield, but that they brought equal intensity to both.

The door at the end of the hall was opened by two Grunt servants. Six could see the hallway she had come through to her right, but the purple spaceship walls had been cut away to meet a brown prefab building that made up the other half of the complex. Judging by the burn marks and twisted metal on what had been the ship's hull, it had been worth more to the Elites to ground the ship than to recover it.

The Shipmaster spoke to Relk, who nodded and burped a few words that she thought she recognized as thanks. He ordered the Grunts to accompany them, a phrase that Relk didn't translate since the little aliens joining him and Six on either side were a pretty obvious result.

"He wants to know if I can fly a ship alone," said Relk as they took their leave and headed down a hall in the direction that Six had come from.

"Can you?"

"I could fly a...I don't know the word."

"What's it look like?"

He sketched out the shape of a tuning fork in the air.

"A Spirit," she said. "I recognize that. But they don't have slipspace drives."

"No."

"We need something that can get us off the planet once we find Jorge. What about a Phantom?"

"I don't understand your names for our ships!"

Six gritted her teeth. Under better circumstances she might have laughed, but she was tired and stuck, and working out the semantics of which craft to take seemed pointless now that they had permission to leave. They would take what they could get: but what if nothing at this base could both be piloted by one person and leave the planet? What if the ship they were walking through right now, the wreck, had brought all the others down from space?

She tried to explain. "The Phantoms were used in the battle over Reach. They're troop transports, but not big, maybe thirty meters? Do you understand meters?"

He spat out a Sangheili word. "I think I understand. When we get to the hanger, I'll point."

Someone shouted. Six turned to see the source of the noise, raising her pistol. They were almost back to the parts of the ship that she recognized. Although she wouldn't know what the entrance looked like, she could see her cell and others, most of them with their doors open, along this hallway. From the direction of the audience chamber came the female Sangheili.

She was alone, and livid. She wore no helmet, so Six could see more in her slavering jaws than in her tiny eyes that she was raring for a fight. She looked like most other Sangheili Six had encountered before she met Relk.

The female lunged toward Six, her needles clutched in hands that dwarfed them.

Six raised her borrowed gun. The Elite balked, her eyes widening, and Six thought with a start that she looked like she'd never been threatened before, or shared Relk's reluctance to fight. Still she raised one needle and kept barreling toward Six in a rush that the Spartan thought suddenly must not be sponsored by the Shipmaster: if it had been an organized attempt to get her back, there would be other Elites with her. This was either the female acting on her own or the Shipmaster making one last attempt to get rid of both of them.

Six didn't want to play into his plans.

The Elite collided with her in a rush of blue-gray limbs. Six reached out, bent her knees, and caught the Elite by the wrist and under the chin. The Elite thrashed, bending Six toward the wall so that she had to take quick steps to the side and spread her feet, feeling her armor shift slightly as it compensated for the weight and the movement she was attempting to make. It was battening down, shifting into gear. The Elite was as heavy as an armored Spartan, and Six felt all that weight in her shoulders as she heaved the Elite to the side and threw her down. The Elite crashed into the nearest cell and slid, her head and shoulders disappearing around the corner as her legs kicked.

Six slammed her palm against the panel that looked like a door control.

It worked. The door whisked shut as the Elite was getting to her feet. If she was pounding on the closed door, Six couldn't hear it through the thick material.

She looked at Relk. He nodded in appreciation. The Grunts had fled to the other side of the hallway, and casually wandered back, waving their arms and talking at one another and at Six in what seemed to be a congratulatory manner.

"They're impressed that you stood up to a Sangheili," said Relk hesitantly.

"Tell them that I won't be leading a Grunt rebellion any time soon. We need to keep moving."

"Really? I should tell them?"

"Probably not, no."

The Grunts lead them outside. The scrubby ground turned to hastily paved gray runways around the side of the base, and Six saw a variety of Covenant craft skulking on the ground. There were more than enough to take down a couple Spartans. Instead of thinking like that, though, she thought should be figuring out which one to take.

For a moment she and Relk just wandered between the ships. Six couldn't help but marvel at the high, curved, purple walls. Aesthetics were irrelevant for their own sake, but the Covenant ships looked pushy and strong up close, and aesthetically pleasing strength was the only kind Spartans were conditioned to appreciate.

She stopped at one that looked about the right size. "This is a Phantom Gunboat. We were briefed on these."

"This is a _Kayayusa,_" said Relk."And I was a sword master. When I was in infantry we were trained, briefly, to fly them."

"So you can fly it now?"

"Yes. As long as the flight harness isn't keyed to its owner."

A Grunt chittered and opened the door. The other Grunt had disappeared, but came back towing an Engineer.

Six had seen Engineers briefly on Reach. They floated around like plants or decoration. She knew that they were rigged to explode in the vicinity of a human, and had avoided them when possible. They didn't attack, and it was hard to tell which end was which; she hadn't thought about them very much before. This one didn't have the metal harness those did. Instead its oval body was a smooth surface of purplish skin and black veins. Hanging tendrils gave it the appearance of a jellyfish, but the leathery, turquoise head with alert eyes and bright-purple-tipped tendrils next to them erased all resemblance to an earthly creature.

Six said, "This should help us."

"That's what they say." Relk watched the other aliens go in, then followed.

The interior of the ship was dark, the windows in the cockpit made of blistered glass. Lights glowed on the console. The Engineer floated right to the pilot's seat and then drifted back to Relk more slowly. It reached out a couple tentacles and he stepped back, but the Grunts muttered and Relk allowed the Engineer to touch his face and shoulders. With his eyes closed, he looked generally unhappy about the whole experience. Six waited for the Engineer to pay attention to her, but it barely undulated in her direction before going back to the pilot's seat and picking up what looked like a thick, five-pointed seatbelt.

"It will not reject me if they modify it...or so they say." Relk said.

Six looked over at the Engineer on the other side of the seat. "What happens if it rejects you?"

"You don't want to know."

"I actually don't."

Six moved to the navigator's chair, thankfully free of any but a simple harness, and sat down in a seat too wide for her. She watched the Engineer work. It didn't look like much, but from what she knew about the enigmatic species, they moved too fast and worked machinery in too mysterious a way for human eyes to follow. She realized suddenly that if this one could modify the console to get into the humans' network that she had accessed briefly to talk to Jorge, maybe it could identify his location too.

The Engineer moved away from the seat and bobbed its head. It didn't gesture further, but Relk took the movement as an order and moved around the pilot's chair to sit down in front of the console. He buckled the harness around himself expertly. Six didn't see it interface directly with him or cause him any discomfort. He spread his bulky hands out on the incomprehensible controls. In her desire to look at something she could help out with, she turned to the Engineer.

"Does it have a name?"

Relk passed the question on to the Grunts. "They say it's name is Upside Down."

Six tilted her head. "Is that...actually its name?"

"Huragok are named after the way they float when they are first inflated. They don't really...they're never babies. They get built."

"Huh." Six examined the Engineer with new curiosity. It looked much more like an animal than a machine, and gazed around the cockpit with a serene sense of befuddlement.

They waited. The Grunts spoke. "They say they're done," Relk said. "If we want to go...we have the Shipmaster's permission. We can't keep the Huragok."

"Why not?" She asked, but it took no more than the weight of her own mask as she turned her head to remind her. The Covenant surely had their own ways to prevent their technology from falling into enemy hands, and even if they trusted Relk, he had a demon aboard. They weren't going to leave a semi-sentient supercomputer just floating around the place.

It would be incredibly useful to have the Engineer along, though, both so she could try to find Jorge's location as efficiently as possible and so that the humans could gain an advantage over the Covenant. For so long she had been thinking only in terms of herself, Jorge, and Halsey's Spartan team surviving that imagining friendly faces looking at her back on Earth was a strange exercise. If she brought the UNSC an Engineer, though, this whole adventure would end on a bright note.

"Would they notice he's missing when we..." She trusted that the Grunts couldn't speak English. "...don't come back?"

"We'll be gone," Relk said, and it hit her that they would be: maybe soon she would see Reach for the last time, and maybe, like so many times before, it would hold them tight in its grasp and refuse to let go.

She said, "I'll see the Grunts out."

He nervously turned back to the control board, and she thought that whether he could _actually _fly this craft was a problem she'd worry about after she'd taken the Engineer. She waved at the Grunts with her orange-backed hands like telling children to go play outside, and the diminutive aliens scurried toward the ship's back hatch. The Engineer followed them, bobbing along and looking to its left and right. Six followed it.

When the four of them reached the ramp, the Grunts took a few steps down and then turned back to wave the Engineer ahead of them. Six reached out and gently wrapped her fingers around one of its thicker tendrils. It flinched, and she involuntarily expected it to sting like a jellyfish. Instead it bobbed frantically a few times, the tendril nearly sliding out of her grasp, and then stopped and reached two other tendrils toward the panel on the top of her forearm armor. It reeled itself in, no longer resisting, and began to inspect the panel. With its tiny face closer to her she could see slightly bulging black eyes that looked featureless and so much like marbles that she almost expected them to fall off its face.

The Grunts chittered and looked back at her, one of them raising a pistol.

"Get going," she said, staring them down. With some nervousness she realized that the Engineer had started opening the panel on her armor.

"Go!"

Both the Grunts and the Engineer fled, the Engineer back toward the cockpit. The Grunts were surely going right back to the Shipmaster right now. "Relk! Shut the back door."

He did. She stomped back to the bridge, passing the Engineer on the way. It investigated her armor again and she shook it off. "Hey, little guy. This isn't what you're here to look at. You, Upside Down, are ready to go on a field trip."

* * *

Jorge hated being alone.

He didn't show it: there was no one to show it _too_, here in the city that erupted suddenly from the edge of the forest, its silver buildings clawing at the sky. There were no suburbs, just the rare farmhouse like the one he had seen last night. The streets that he followed turned from dirt to pavement and then to four empty lanes crawling between buildings. Birds flitted between skyscrapers.

He walked down a street that looked new. There were no cracks in the pavement, and no wrecked cars. Many vehicles, though, had been left by the side of the road. Smashed computers and disemboweled on-board nav systems attested to the hiemal cleanse of the Winter Contingency. He watched the windows for the shapes of Covenant, but none had seemed to want to move in to claim this affluent but tactically neutral city - at least not yet.

Instead of a battleground, it was a portrait of a civilization plucked away. Families would have rushed to spaceports when the invasion began. They would have gotten out even before the newest member of Noble Team had arrived on the planet.

They would, he hoped, still be alive.

His thoughts flowed sluggishly, and as if from far away. He thought that it might be a sort of compensation for not having gotten to sleep as consistently as usual in some time: the sun was setting and he could imagine that this city was as alien as Sangheilios. It gave him just as much information about itself.

He thought of Six, taken away, and the last vision he had had of her, swinging at the Covenant in the troop transport. He believed that she would be back, but he believed it as an almost religious conviction based on the other times they had been separated and brought back together. She was part of his team, an asset, but not one he could count on right now, and he expected her to think of him the same way.

But the thought of their reunion comforted him and ran in the back of his head like a film as he crossed parks and highways.

He did not have a destination in mind so much as a desire to be in the thick of the city so that he could find a defensible position. The Covenant were still looking for him: stubby purple ships passed over head a few times in the dying light, and he hid inside alleys or behind cars, once ducking inside a covered vehicle only to find most of the seats filled with jackets and bags, some family's abandoned supplies. The driver's seat was empty, the keys missing.

After the ship passed, he switched seats and looked under the dash of the car. A few taps on the screen proved that the city's grid AI had died or cut off from its wireless. The car wouldn't start without the digital key, not unless he ripped into a very specific part of the engine.

He propped up the hood and surveyed an engine that looked only vaguely familiar to diagrams he had seen in training. Carjacking was some part mechanics and some part computer programming, but for someone wearing a powered suit it could also be a matter of physics. He could manually trigger the starter and wouldn't have to worry about getting burnt doing it.

Jorge reached into the engine and pulled. The engine hummed, roared, and settled into a quiet murmur of environmentally friendly sound. Pipes vibrated against the back of his arm. He wouldn't have tried this without MJOLNIR.

The car also wasn't modified to take the weight of his armor. The wheels struggled and creaked when he sat in the driver's seat, but the car moved forward slowly when he pressed on the gas. He would drive while it lasted, his helmeted head rubbing against the car's roof. It wasn't comfortable, but it was faster than a walk and could be sustained for a longer than even a Spartan sprint.

Beyond a park filled with islands of tall grass he found a smaller street and a line of shops. The lighted signs were dark. Most were written in English, some in Hungarian. Some paper signs had fallen and wafted into the street. The car slid by without comment.

When his radio crackled he looked around, almost sure that the sound had come from inside. When he realized that it had not, he activated his comm.

For the past few weeks the channels had all been silent. Now, one blinked green.

He stumbled over the way to answer, but only in his head. For all her knew, the aliens controlled this channel.

Six's voice came through the radio before he could answer. "This is Noble Six calling for Noble Five, please confirm signal." Her voice was broken up and obscured. He felt a lump form in his throat and disappear.

"This is Noble Five," he said, and heard the same static engulf his voice.

She said, "Please confirm." She sounded confident and calm, and most importantly, she sounded safe. She didn't sound like someone being held hostage.

He couldn't be sure.

He stole her firm attitude from her. He glanced around, saw the name of a mall in large block letters on a corner across from him. He turned the car toward it as he spoke, the engine still quiet but accelerating slowly and laboriously. "Noble Five on TEAMCOMM. If you're UNSC, meet me at Esztergomi Sétálóutca."

He heard the click of her comm turning off a second before he switched off his. Did the Covenant know he was here now?

If they did, they had Six, and he needed to get to them to get her back.

He drove toward the mall and parked in a double-wide street leading to a parking garage. The sidewalk leading to the entrance seemed like the most exposed ground he had ever walked across. He looked up again at the narrow sky.

The door were locked. He broke the glass with his fist, peeled back the sharp, stringy metal threads inside, and walked in.

* * *

The Engineer called Upside Down remained right-side-up and useful as Relk and Six blasted off from the Covenant complex. Evening had started to fall, washing the horizon in orange and obscuring the distant mounds of purple mountains. If Relk was nervous about the unfamiliar controls of the craft and the potentially treacherous seatbelt, he didn't show it.

"So," Six thought out loud. "How do I find out where Jorge is from the air?"

"Relk," she said. "Can you get the Engineer to configure this console to pick up human networks? There might be some AI alive somewhere with a map."

"I don't know." Relk was focused on the sky and the terrain undulating by below. She stood up, aware that even if she needed to do something at the navigation station she wouldn't be able to do it quickly, and gripped the back of his seat.

"You'll have to talk to it," Relk said.

He was calm but tense, and she had a feeling he was hiding his fear.

"Are you going to be okay?" She realized that if her plan to get off the planet worked, he would never see his people again, or at least not until the hypothetical end of the war.

"I fear they might catch us," he said. "I fear they might know."

"They do know. You have permission to leave."

"I know," he said. "That is unusual, for me."

She laughed quietly. "It'll be okay, I think. You know...Jorge and I will try to help you if you come with us to the UNSC."

"I will not help your warriors," he said loudly. He slapped a hand down on the console, then flinched and clawed his hands over the controls as if to catch himself and protect the ship from what he had done.

"You don't have to. We're just offering you safety."

She hoped she could actually do that. She couldn't imagine Kurt or anyone higher in rank than he was in either the UNSC or ONI allowing a captured Elite much self-sufficiency.

Relk said, "I could safely stay here and be an Oracle."

"Yes. Until someone finds you out."

"Or I ran away." He coughed, an approximation of a laugh, and she noticed a new self-deprecating awareness that Relk had gained since his brief time ruling over people of his own species. He sounded...smarter now, although maybe that was because his English was rapidly improving. He seemed to have set cowardice aside as something not as useful as...whatever he had learned as an Oracle. Faking authority? Going along with the rules? She tended to forget that Relk was, in his own panicked way, very pragmatic. It was also a marvel how quickly he had picked up both the Spartans' language and mannerisms.

It could be dangerous to leave him with the Covenant, especially in a position of power.

The sun was almost gone. Stars started thickly dappling the wide sky. She could see a rapidly approaching city in the distance, surely the same one that Jorge had mentioned and that she had seen before.

_ I need to be able to communicate with him._

She turned to look at the Engineer, who was floating to the side as if unsure what to do with itself. (Perhaps, after Relk, she assumed all non combative Covenant were quizzical and baffled.)

Movement from outside the ship caught her eye. Relk had seen it too.

"They're scouts," he said. The rounded-off shape of a Covenant ship flitted around the edges of the city.

Six asked, "Will they be monitoring human signals?"

"Monitoring?" This was a new word for Relk.

"Watching?" Six tried.

"I don't know. It's more likely that a command ship somewhere else is watching."

"Okay. How close to the city can you go?"

"Ah..."

"Go in. Between the buildings."

"I am not a pilot..."

"Go over, then. If we get close enough, I can see him on my HUD."

"Okay..."

The low buildings flashing by revealed to Six how fast they had really been going. Relk banked wide around taller skyscrapers.

Six turned to the Engineer and took off her helmet. The creature perked up at the flash of electronics inside.

"See this?" she pointed at the comm. "I need you to connect this to that." She pointed to the console. "I need to be able to talk. Do you understand?"

If this worked, she would need to keep this whole ship out of Covenant hands in the future.

The Engineer drifted over to the helmet, poised three tendrils on the edge, and started rearranging parts so fast that she couldn't follow what it was doing. She glanced aside at Relk.

"It will probably know to try to synchronize both systems," he said. "You'll get whatever human channel is closest to us, though. Not necessarily the one you want."

"What about this?" She handed the helmet to the Engineer (not without some reservations; the mask looked like it was floating, barely held up by the tendrils) and took from a side pocket the comm that Relk's attendants had given her.

"That will work, but other Engineers might know you're using it, and the signal will be weak since it is...coming from our base."

She sighed. "Okay. We'll use that as a last resort. For now..."

The Engineer sidled around her to get to the console, and she moved to the other side of Relk's chair to watch the floating alien work. Relk looked at a screen instead of out the window. The Engineer's tendrils blurred across the console, and a blue sigil appeared.

"Well," Relk said, "I think it's found something to talk to."


	34. Humanity

A/N: This is officially the last chapter. There is also an epilogue coming. Thanks to everybody who's stuck with me through this big project.

The last chapter is a bit rushed because I wanted to get it finished before NaNo began. I've taken some liberties with the Haloverse (though no more than usual), and tried to tie it to the expanded universe, because I am having fun reading the Halo books.

**XXXIV**

Jorge spent some time in the mall.

It was tiled in white and blue. The storefronts were closed completely with dark gray metal curtains. The natural light that fell in through the thin, rectangular windows on the far-away ceiling did not quite prevent the overwhelming impression of cloudy grayness.

The Covenant had scorched the city around it, but the mall had remained almost unaffected due to being unoccupied. Jorge knew that behind the metal curtains he would find strangely neat displays of items, and preserved or molding food. Abandoned, it still offered some food and corners in which he could skulk and be certain the Covenant troops couldn't see him. Moving forward was important but optional. There was only more contested land on the other side of the city, and he couldn't rely on the Insurrectionists having friends.

The city's supervisory AI was still alive.

One large kiosk near the entrance would have been used by mall employees during working hours. It also featured an outpost of the city's AI. A thick, white pole like a parking barrier harbored a small screen with the city seal underneath, and on it in blue glowed the stylized face of a lion.

"Good evening. There is a sale on shoes on level seven, and - oh, look at that, someone's messing with regulations. Get out of there, please. Pardon the intrusion. Pardon me."

Jorge approached the AI slowly, lowering his weapon. The flat lion eyes blinked.

Jorge said, "Hey," as if trying to calm a wounded animal.

"Good evening. My name is Eponymous. There seems to be a communication coming from outside. That's unusual. Shoo. Shoo."

Jorge leaned down and put his hand on one side of the screen. "Let it through."

"We are in a state of emergency."

"I know. Let it through."

"What is your authority?" The AI's voice was vaguely male, but high-pitched, and energetic.

"UNSC Sierra -"

He didn't need to say anything further before the signal came in.

At first it was a squeaky little noise, like baby birds. It sounded familiar enough that he thought it must have been an animal native to Reach, but then he recognized it as the small sounds Engineers made in flight. He had usually met them when they were running away. Then he heard a deeper growl, and Six's voice.

"Come in, this is Sierra-B312, Noble Six."

"Aislinn," he said. "This is Noble Five."

"Jorge, where are you?"

"Is this line secure?" It must have been, if she had used his name.

"I'm not sure anyone's made this sort of line before. We're using an Engineer to reboot UNSC signals. The Covvies don't know we're doing it yet."

"I'm in a mall."

"We're over the city. I see the name you mentioned." She sounded eager and nervous.

"Eshtergoumi Setalauka."

"Yes. It's written on the top of the building. We're coming down onto a helipad."

He looked up seven floors to the ceiling and the skylights. "Okay. I'm coming."

The elevators were without power. Some corners of the mall were dark and shadowy, but he found the stairs and started to climb. The city AI watched him from screens on every floor.

On the seventh, at the end of a short hallway, was a ladder to the roof. It shook under his weight. At the top he tore the lock off of the clasp of the trap door and pushed out onto the roof.

The Covenant might even be able to track him through the city AI, but he didn't think that they would care. Two Spartans had done some damage to them all ready but the planet was theirs. Jorge did not know what had happened elsewhere in the universe, but knew that the war might have changed a great deal since he inadvertently left it.

On the helipad he watched a Covenant ship approach. It was close enough that it would have seen him as soon as he opened the trap door, and he knew that it must be the one Six had called from. The sun was going down, casting complex reflections of purple and gold across the round nose of the ship. When it landed, it was almost too big for the helipad.

Jorge waited next to a heating vent, the trap door open behind him, the AI lights blinking below. Eponymous would go back to sleep once his city was empty.  
Six stepped out of the ship first, masked and armed with a Covenant gun sealed to her back.

She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck, bashing their foreheads together in a Spartan kiss that he returned. With his arm around her waist they moved back to the ship, her cheek nodding against his shoulder. A Engineer floated in the doorway to the ship, and Six batted it aside with the back of her hand. It made disgruntled chirping noises.

"Get us out of here, Relk," Six shouted. She sat down behind the pilot's chair, slapping Jorge on the shoulder to get him to take the seat next to Relk. The Elite was wearing different armor than when Jorge had last seem him, more ornate and more brightly colored. The Engineer drifted up behind Six as Relk blasted the ship off from the side of the building and sent it in a nauseating curve between the buildings. Six took her helmet off and raked her fingers through her shaggy hair. She had gained a red scar across her cheek.

"We're getting off this planet," she said, all in a rush as if afraid that someone might take the words from her. "Relk has permission. They won't stop us."

Jorge unlatched his mask and let it drop onto his lap. Six stared at him sharply, and he wondered what he looked like. "Thank you," he said, "for finding me." He couldn't quite feel relief yet.

"You're welcome," Six said, and Relk nodded.

Jorge asked, "Where have you been?"

"Relk was made a minor deity," Six answered while Relk was still forming a word. "He got us permission to leave. When I was captured by the Covenant he convinced them to leave me alive."

"Then thank goodness for that," Jorge said.

"You're welcome," said Relk, and Jorge thought that his English enunciation had become clearer over the last few days.

They headed for the atmosphere.

The dying sunlight faded fast in bands of red, orange, and yellow, and then they were in the blue-black sky and wispy cloud of the atmosphere. The ship rocked and shook. Jorge braced one hand on the side of Six's seat and one on the console, and she rested her hand on his arm. Relk and Six told their story.  
Jorge still expected a Covenant ship to follow or hail them. When they broke through the atmosphere he could see a fleet of Covenant ships that hadn't been here before, surely now using Reach as a staging area for their next push toward Earth. He looked for the wreckage of the Long Night of Solace and saw only battle-ready ships.

"I almost feel bad about leaving," Six said. "Almost."

He watched the planet begin to fall away and show its curving sides. Small Covenant craft zipped by on either side. Relk was driving sedately.

"Where should I go?" Relk asked.

"Anywhere but here," Six said, and Jorge nodded. Mentally he added Anywhere but Earth.

"Illioni," he said.

Six looked across at him while Relk glanced in confusion at the Engineer and looked around as he moved the ship further from the fleet. She said, "That world was attacked by Insurrectionists years ago."

"I know," Jorge said. "I was there. The colonists should have recovered by now. It will be a safe place, and not often frequented by the UNSC."

"We're not trying to avoid them."

"I would think that Relk is."

Six nodded. "Okay. That'll work as a recovery area."

Relk said, "What do I do?"

"Pull up a map. Let's see if we can find what the Covenant call that planet."

A few minutes and some language confusion later, they had a course set for Illioni. The Covenant ships still hadn't bothered them, although Relk had pressed some button in sequences that looked like clearance codes. Reach still floated behind them, blue and green and gray. Relk announced that they would jump into slipspace in a few minutes, and Jorge and Six replaced their helmets out of habit.

When the stars smudged and stretched into the slipspace tunnel, Jorge felt relief so strong that he could not remember the last time this emotion had flooded him. The familiarity only strengthened it. He saw Six sit back in her seat and drape her arms across her lap, bowing her head. Relk crossed his hands as if in prayer and breathed a phlegmy sigh.

It felt too easy.

Six stood up. "Jorge. Can I talk to you in the back?"

He nodded. The back wasn't far away in this small ship, just a bay not unlike that in a Pelican, separated from the bridge only by a wall that blocked half of the view of space. She sat in one of the wide, flat seats designed for Elite bodies. He sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder, not sure what to say about the rush of relief and joy he had felt as soon as black space disappeared.

Messy and tired, she leaned her head against his shoulder, found the plating uncomfortable, and knocked a fist against it before settling down again with her mask at a different angle. She said, "We can get a call out to the army from Illioni."

He nodded.

"And then what? Keep going to war?"

"They're going to want to take Relk out of our hands. We'll have a lot of talking to do."

"Halsey was the one who was good at that."

"I just hope she's alive."

"Yeah. I'm glad you're alive too, you know?"

"You too. I should know by now that you won't die on me." He patted her hand.

"Spartans never die," she laughed. "But there were a lot of false alarms. I don't think I realized how much it was affecting me. But that's okay. We don't have regular mental check-ups any more."

"That might be good. Spartan-Twos aren't supposed to..." He tightened his hand around hers.

"That will be a boring discussion. Keeping Relk alive will be the more interesting one. No offense."

"None taken." He looked at the black walls, thinking about slipspace. "Although I'd rather they didn't break up Noble Team."

"Me too. I'm not sure how many Spartan-Threes are left."

"Not enough," he said, and thought that there would have to be some sort of memorial for Noble Team. Only he and Six could tell their story, and ONI would make sure to get any scrap of information they had about what had been going on on Reach after the invasion.

He wouldn't mind giving it.

"I'm just amazed that worked," Six said after a moment, laughing her old bubbly laugh that made him realize how tired her voice had become, and he smiled along with her.

Then the ship shuddered.

Six and Jorge sat straighter, looking around, then he took three long steps to get to the bridge and shouted to Relk to find out what happened. The Engineer had taken the space in front of the navigator's seat. The viewport was no longer filled with the slipspace tunnel, but showed normal blackness and stars with the rifle-shaped bulk of a UNSC ship right in front of them.

"It placed itself in our way!" Relk yelled, hands hovering over the console uselessly.

"That's impossible," Six said from behind him. "You can't pinpoint ships well enough to interdict them."

"Don't worry," Jorge said. She sounded panicked. "It's one of ours."

"I know, but it's sending out fighters."

She pointed. Three angular ships sliced out from behind the capitol ship.

Jorge leaned over to the console that the Engineer had been looking at. It displayed English letters and he thought that this must have been what Six had used to find him. It had been clever of her to bring the Engineer aboard. "How does this work?" He asked anyone who would answer. "We need to hail them."

Relk said, "They're calling me already!"

"Answer," Jorge said. "This button?" He put his hand over a flashing sigil.

Relk leaned back. "Yes!"

Six leaned forward over the seat between them as Jorge answered the hail with a UNSC code meant to indicate friendlies in enemy territory. He thought he detected some hesitation in the human pilot's reply. "Where are you coming from?"

"Reach."

"That's impossible. Reach was emptied."

"Well, you missed us," Six said. "We just want to go home."

"We'll bring you in. This is UNSC Temperance off of Illioni. You say you're both Spartans?"

"I'm Aislinn-B312," Six said. "Colonel Holland and Doctor Halsey can verify for us."

"Okay." The pilot sounded young. "Wait a minute and we'll escort you. Come around."

"Follow those ships," Jorge muttered to Relk, and then raised his voice. "Temperance, we have some...organic materials aboard."

Relk growled, and Jorge was sure the pilot heard it.

"I can see that by your ship. Um, you'll have to explain the rest to us in the dock, Sierra-052. We'll put you through quarantine."

Jorge was glad that he was a Spartan: this would probably be much more difficult if he weren't. "Good enough, soldier."

"Captain, sir. Captain Trace."

"Thanks for your help."

"How did you find us?" Six asked. "Or did we just run into you?"

"We weren't monitoring slipspace. The Temperence must have just brought you out with its mass shadow. Space is getting crowded these days."

"Fine with me," said Six.

The UNSC ships had nosed up on either side of the Covenant craft, so close that Jorge was sure they could just look through the windows and see Relk at the controls.

When they got to the edge of the Temperance's shielded landing bay Jorge saw that the troops had been more suspicious than they had let on. Two groups of ten marines stood holding assault rifles on either side of the landing lane, and another single-pilot craft was parked slantwise to the runway, blocking their escape forward if they were to try. Relk brought his ship down slowly, and as soon as he killed the engine he looked between Jorge and Six as if he were going to cry.

"This is it," he said. "They'll going to kill me for you. Don't let them."

"We'll try," Six said, and Jorge stood up to be the first one out of the craft. He propped his turret gun just inside the ship and gestured for Six to set down her weapons. She did, and he noted that Relk was unarmed, without the prized Covenant sword that he had started out with.

"Keep that thing near the front," Jorge said, looking at Relk and the Engineer. "It might send them into even more of a frenzy than you."

"I'll just...stay here..." Relk said, and sat down.

"That's actually a good idea," Six said. "We'll go out to meet them. You stay put."

The last time Jorge saw Relk before going out to meet the marines, the alien was opening the ship's back hatch for him.

The Spartans were met by the armed contingent and a female officer in gray, who looked up at them with a dispassionate sternness. Jorge tipped his head to her, then took off his helmet. The pure size of a Spartan should be enough to convince the officer that they weren't impostors.

The officer saluted.

"Ma'am," Six said, "We have an Elite on board."

The officer's eyebrows pinched toward the bridge of her nose, but otherwise she remained impassive. If Jorge had known her for longer than a matter of seconds he would have been able to gauge her opinion much more easily, but he was pretty sure that any member of the UNSC would have the same reaction to those words.

The officer said, "Is it alive?"

"It's friendly," said Six. "He helped us get off Reach during the occupation, and now he's willing to work with us but he's scared that he'll be shot on sight."

"Understandably so," said the officer dryly. Her nameplate said Anderson. "He helped you?"

"Yes."

"Can we speak to him?"

"He speaks passable English," Six said. Jorge watched Anderson weighing her options.

She said, "Let me see him."

The marines muttered, and she added, "I'll bring my guard."

She told the guard to go in first. Six accompanied the two hesitant marines into the ship, calling out ahead for Relk.

When she entered the ship, Relk was standing at the door to the bridge, with his hands in the air.

"I am friendly" he said in English so strained it almost sounded worse than his usual. "I'm friendly."

* * *

After a great deal of storytelling and examining their three sides of the story from multiple angles, Anderson believed him.

Six, Jorge, and Relk were separated, Relk only briefly. No one wanted to be in a room alone with him. Marines muttered "hinge-head" and other epithets that Six was glad Relk could not understand. Jorge told them about his travels to Sanghelios, which set Anderson and her officers whispering. Six did not doubt that this information would get to ONI as soon as humanly possible. She met with Jorge often and they told one another the stories of their days apart. Six slowly got used to the idea that she had a future again, not just an increasingly alert wasteland. The Spartans dressed like marines in green shirts and chamo pants. Six took a long shower.

The Spartans were not allowed to have a say on what would eventually happen to Relk. The marines were polite but unfriendly to them. Six had almost forgotten the Spartan-ODST rivalries left over from the second generation, but she could imagine that these marines were thinking about it. She was allowed to talk to Relk through a door. He remained sedate and frightened.

On one day in which both Spartans were seated in front of his door, Relk said, "I've thought about attacking them."

Six looked at him sharply, Jorge quizzically. Jorge lay a hand on Six's knee. Over the last few days they had felt their relationship settle into something certain, lasting, and quiet. Six had been relieved that no one had seemed to notice. As much as she wanted to ask other Spartans about it, she also liked that there was no one to ask.

"I thought about it," Relk said.

"Why didn't you?" Six asked, and she could practically hear Jorge saying because he wouldn't in his head.

"Because there were too many of them," said Relk.

"Would you attack them if there were fewer?"

Relk said, "I don't know. Whatever keeps me safe. I'm afraid that this food is not good for me."

Relk had been eating MREs after exhausting his own supplies that he been restocked in the Covenant base, but there were signs that they were not providing nutrition needed for his species. He looked thin, Six noticed, with a less pronounced bow in his neck where muscle had atrophied.

"You'll get out of there eventually," Six said. "When ONI comes."

She glanced at Jorge. Everyone knew that the UNSC's spy wing was not known for its kindness and pity, or for making exceptions to its convoluted rules. Kill the Covenant and explain the location of Sanghelios were near the top of the list of rules, where they were simpler.

"Are you going to tell them where our homeworld is?" Relk switched the subject.

"I don't know," Jorge said. "I ended up there by accident. I couldn't read the controls on the ship."

"They'll ask you too," Six said, and had a feeling that all three of them knew that ask could imply torture. It would be an inexact science on another species, but ONI had probably autopsied Covenant bodies before. She didn't know much about the spy ring except that they had a lot of power. They had not had a lot to do with the Spartan program, although she had assumed that Halsey had worked with them to start it.

Relk shook his head.

A klaxon sounded. Six and Jorge stood up.

"Officer on deck!" A marine yelled from his guard post down the hall, and then Anderson was stomping toward him. Six had not learned a lot about her in the last few days except that she was glad to see survivors of Reach but did not see fit to accompany them throughout the ship after the initial interrogation. Anderson was busy and curt, no different from many officers except in the tendency she had to chew the inside of her cheek when she thought no one was watching.

"A delegation from ONI has arrived," Anderson said as she approached. Six snapped off a salute and saw Jorge do the same, but Anderson just kept talking through it. "The Admiral's with them."

"Paragonsky herself?" Jorge said, surprised.

Six had only heard the name a few times. It was often suspected to be a pseudonym, or perhaps a code for what was really a council of many people who made up a Cerberus ONI. If Paragonsky really was the Commander in Chief of the spy ring, she had an extraordinary amount of power, second only to Lord Hood.

Anderson looked pressured. "Yes. We weren't prepared for this..." She looked ready to list all the ways her marines hadn't cleaned up properly for the visit, but found it would take too long. "She wants to see you."

Six nodded and Jorge, who returned the gesture. Without his mask she could see his sharp expression confirm that they would both do what they could to keep Relk safe and the situation as calm as possible. They had stayed up late at night talking about how introducing Relk to the UNSC might go. Since it had gone so smoothly with Anderson and Relk both complying even better than could have planned, they felt like something might go wrong at any moment.

On the other hand, Six had faith in the overall goodness of the UNSC. One of its most important members, she thought, would not rush to attack a being they were told was a friend.

"You'll be leaving the Temperance after this," Anderson said. "I think the admiral has plans for you."

Paragonsky's ship had landed in the same place as Relk had landed his. The Covenant ship had been cleared off of the working ramp and dissected, with the Engineer at first helping and then caged when it began to investigate UNSC rifles and helmets, trying to rebuild them. The metal cage, fabricated from spare parts, was now sitting on the deck like a present to give to Paragonsky, and guarded by two marines. Upside Down floated mournfully inside.

In the beginning of their stay Six had gone to visit it a few times and had wondered with a pang whether it had been given anything to eat, or even whether it needed any food that humans would be able to provide. After asking Relk, the marines had managed to get the Engineer to eat a paste made from yeast extract. A few of them had grown fond of the little creature and also gone to visit it; Six did not see any of those marines among the group gathered now. It was about as many people as had greeted her when she first arrived, although their rifles were held tight and perfectly angled against the marines' chests instead of held ready like they had been when the Covenant ship had entered. Since armor was officially a Spartan's dress uniform, Six felt out of place in her borrowed clothing.

Paragonsky descended her ship's ramp with a guard on either side.

She was a white-haired woman leaning on a cane, bright blue eyes staring straight ahead. She wore a decorated gray uniform that fit her loosely. Instead of messiness, the impression that she gave off was off a different kind of formality. She wore her admiral's sigils like a gown.

Six and Jorge held a salute until she told them to drop it.

"Spartans." She approached, looked up. "I have heard that not only did you survive the fall of Reach, you visited the enemy homeworld and captured two specimens to bring back to us. That is, if I may use the old sense of the word, incredible."

Six waited for Jorge to speak, feeling that although the ranks of Noble Team had dissolved he had more knowledge than she did. However, he seemed hesitant to mold words into a form that would appear to the admiral to be diplomatic. "Ahh," he said, and looked at the floor, not wanting to explain. The concerned expression brought out the crinkled lines at the corners of his mouth, and Six felt suddenly sorry for him. She had to quell the urge to smile at his bashfulness. Looking into Paragonsky's eyes cured that urge.

"That is true, ma'am," she said, and Paragonsky's eyes snapped to hers.

"What is your designation?"

"Sierra-B312, ma'am."

"Go on."

"Everything you said was correct. We have both an Engineer and an Elite. Sierra-052 can tell you extensively about the Elite homeworld. However, we're looking for a...pardon for our captives. The Elite speaks passable English. He could help us greatly in the war effort if he were allowed to help us."

"Your situation is highly unusual," said Paragonsky.

"Ma'am," said Jorge, and she switched her gaze to him. Six studied Paragonsky's hair, wondering what she did and did not have in common with Halsey besides age and intellectual ruthlessness.

He said, "You must have read Captain Anderson's reports."

She held his gaze a moment longer than was comfortable. She radiated confidence. She was also too stern for Six's liking: she had the feeling that there was no flexibility in this woman, only a resolve, and that Six did not want it set against her.

Six spoke up. "Ma'am, if you don't mind, why did you come directly to us? I was under the impression we would be meeting with you and Kurt...Sierra-051 when we returned to Earth."

Paragonsky blinked at the mention of Six's old teacher, but did not answer the question directly. "I was in the neighborhood," said the old woman dismissively. "We had heard you had a Covenant ally."

"Yes ma'am," Jorge said. "He's good, as aliens go."

"Bring him to me."

"Now, ma'am?" said one of her attendant marines, and Paragonsky showed the first emotion Six had seen on her: rage.

"Yes, now!" she snapped, her shoulders straightening, and Six gestured for the marine to follow her.

When they got to his cell, Relk was cowering.

Paragonsky stopped a few feet away, although she did not look afraid to be near the sort of monster that all her troops were trained to fight. Despite her limp she had followed the marines easily. Jorge nodded toward Relk's cell and Six let him go ahead with the marine and open the door.  
Relk had pressed himself against the back wall. His left arm was halfway between his face and the wall, clawed up mostly trying to hide his face like a child that had done something wrong. His right arm was hidden, pressed against a wall, and Six thought that if he had been hiding a weapon he was doing a decent job.

"This is the admiral of our intelligence team," Jorge said, and waited for Relk to introduce himself. He did not. He shrank even further into the corner of the cell, next to the cot that had been provided him, but pressed his back against the wall. He hissed something, and Six could not be sure whether it was in either language that she knew.

She remembered Jorge's stories of how he met Relk, and how Relk had been in imprisoned for attacking one of his own men.

But surely he had changed? He wasn't a machine, to be set to the exact same task twice and be reassured of the same result.

Jorge reached out and put a hand on Relk's shoulder. His confidence bolstered by the Spartan, the marine next to him also reached out.

Relk shoved his arm against the wall, trapping the marine. The man pushed back against him for a moment, silent and determined, and found that he could not pass the Elite's thick arm.

Relk said, "I want to go home."

Paragonsky stepped into the cell. Six immediately felt like there were far too many people in the small space; with the marine trapped against one wall, Jorge's arm brushing the other, and the admiral in the doorway in the middle, there was hardly room to move.

"Let's all calm down," said Jorge, in a tone that, without patronizing, seemed to work as a mollifying factor; the marine paused, tense, and looked to Paragonsky for orders.

"I don't think we can let you do that," Paragonsky said, and Relk looked at her with his snout twitching. "However, I think we can make an offer that you will not want to refuse."**  
**


	35. Epilogue

**A/N: **I now have 117 followers for this story, which is pretty cool, especially considering that the epilogue coming on the night of Red vs Blue's finale and the eve of Halo 4 is entirely unintentional.

**Epilogue**

The Spartan-Fours were wrestling.

Six watched as two men in square-nosed helmets punched and tried to push one another to the ground, primary-color blue and red armor looking almost festive compared to the bright silver walls and floor of the training room. Upside Down floated along in the distance on the opposite side of the massive room, in a small flock, or herd, or pod of his fellow Engineers.

Six thought the Fours were doing well, for volunteers. She had not quite known how to act around them at first: for Spartan trainees as she knew them, they were far too old.

Admiral Paragonsky had asked Six, Jorge, and Relk to join her in the Infinity project almost half a year ago.

Six and Jorge turned away from the balcony as heavy footsteps approached. Relk was dressed in specially made armor, with the blunt lines of UNSC equipment but the dark blue shine of Sangheili lacquer. He had taken Paragonsky's offer of informing the humans about Elite culture and language. She had been too smart to ask him directly about the morality of helping the war effort, although Relk would talk to Jorge and Six about it many times later. Paragonsky had foreseen many things, although the Arbiter's betrayal of the Covenant had not been one of them. Relk had gone to speak with 'Vadamee, as the only other Elite ever known to work with a Spartan. Six had imagined they had a lot to discuss, but she had never been able to sit down with John.

"How's it going, ambassador?" Six asked, using Relk's unofficial title.

"I have not been busy lately," he said, glancing down at the groups of Spartan-Fours below. "There is talk that the war will soon be over. I am...not sure what we need these troops for."

"Just in case," Jorge said. "The Spartan-Twos were made to fight Insurrectionists. The Threes fought the Covenant." He glanced down at Six, who looked up at him, noting the gray speckles starting to show in his hair. "The Fours...we don't yet know."

Relk sighed, a complicated action when four jaws were involved.

"Or the admiral isn't telling us," Six offered, a likely event. Even on her pet project, the massive flagship Infinity, people muttered about Paragonsky.

Relk folded his arms, a gesture that would have seemed bizarrely human if he didn't still have the hunchbacked profile of a muscled Elite. Advances in human-alien relations meant, on the most basic level, that they could now feed him. He had provided a lot of minor information to the UNSC, and just when guilt was overshadowing his desire to be useful, the Arbiter had began the rift in the Covenant which had led the war, within a year, to a fast, bumpy stop.

He had had his religious crises quietly, but Six had thought based on what Jorge told her that Relk had never quite believed in the Forerunners the same ever since he had been mistaken for someone touched by them, but also that he had a faith in the importance of faith that could not be shaken by finding out something as minor as your gods being mortal. Relk would always believe in something. He just didn't always know what it was.

A buzzer sounded from somewhere on the high ceiling, and Six looked back at where the Spartan-IVs were setting up again, paired up with their opponents.

"Give me a second," she said to Jorge and Relk, and turned back to the rail. She wrapped her hands around it as the countdown buzzer started. People down there would be taking breaths, blinking sweat out of their eyes, calling across personal channels to rib their friends.

Minus three seconds.

"Ready!" Six shouted, and tens of people below her lowered their heads and faced down their enemies.

"Mark!" She shouted, and the last buzzer sounded, and the Spartans leapt for each other.


End file.
